tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-109663942014-12-16T17:37:22.854-05:00Stevie Cameron's blogMr.Mulroney and Mr.PicktonStevie Cameronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12743790393702620918noreply@blogger.comBlogger151125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10966394.post-21852939352148225072010-08-08T20:08:00.000-04:002010-08-08T20:08:14.475-04:00The Oliphant Commission Part 2It's been all-Pickton all the time but I'm taking a brief break for what I hope is my second (and last) Oliphant Commission post.<br /><br />In Part 1 I told you about being subpoenaed by the Oliphant Commission; now I'd like to share the letter my lawyer, Brendan Van Niejenhuis, wrote to Nancy Brooks, one of the Commission lawyers who came to see us in Toronto.<br /><br /> <br /><br />June 12, 2009<br />Private & Confidential<br />Delivered Via Courier<br />Ms. Nancy Brooks<br />Senior Commission Counsel <br />‘<br />Commission of Inquiry into Certain Business and<br />Financial Dealings between Karlheinz Schreiber<br />and the Right Honourable Brian Mulroney<br /><br />P.O. Box 2740, Station "D"<br />Ottawa, ON KIP 5W7<br /><br />Dear Ms. Brooks:<br />Re: Stevie Cameron<br /><br />As you will recall, I act for Ms. Stevie Cameron in relation to the Commission.<br />In the course of the public hearings in Phase I of the Inquiry, some participants chose to make certain statements concerning Ms. Cameron. Most particularly, Mr. Mulroney and, to a lesser extent, Mr. Lavoie, testified about Ms. Cameron in a manner calculated to harm her professional and personal reputation. For example:<br /><br />• "Stevie Cameron is the biggest Mulroney hater in Canada.<br />Everybody knows that. She fabricates, prevaricates, and has spent a<br />lifetime consumed with hatred, il wil towards the Mulroney family.<br />Everybody knows that." (Mulroney, May 13,2009,35265)<br /><br />• "(the R.C.M.P.) Commissioner... indicated... that from the<br />beginning this thing had been a hoax orchestrated by Ms. Stevie<br />Cameron and by Giorgio Pelossi." (Mulroney, May 19,2009,40138)<br /><br />• "rumours and innuendo... were nurtured by Ms. Stevie<br />Cameron" (Mulroney, May 12,2009,33249)<br /><br />• "...Ms. Cameron and Mr. Pelossi were able in 1995,<br />September 29, 1995, to persuade the R.C.M.P. to write a false libelous<br />travesty to the Government of Switzerland about me on the basis of<br />statements, all of which turned out to be false - all of which turned<br />out to be false." (Mulroney, May 19,2009,40210)<br />• " . . . they began a 14-month multimilion dollar assault on me<br />based on evidence provided by Stevie Cameron and Giorgio Pelossi, a<br />convicted felon; Ms Cameron by then I believe a secret<br />representative, a secret police informant." (Mulroney, May 19,2009,<br />40817)<br /><br />• "The quote/unquote 'reliable informants' - remember those<br />words - the reliable informants who supplied the false information to<br />the RC.M.P. were Ms. Stevie Cameron, by now herself a secret<br />police informant for the R.C.M.P...." (Mulroney, May 12, 2009,<br />33251)<br /><br />• "The confidential source (who supplied 'completely false'<br />information) being of course Ms. Stevie Cameron" (Mulroney, May<br />13,2009,35191 to 35193)<br /><br />• "(RC.M.P. Sgt. Fraser Fiegenwald)... was misled by Stevie<br />Cameron" (Mulroney, May 13, 2009, 36933)<br /><br />• "I didn't know at the time that Ms. Cameron had accepted to<br />be a secret police informant for the RC.M.P. Garbage in garbage out<br />was the style." (Mulroney, May 13, 2009, 35300)"<br /><br />• "...as you know, we all know now, it was a hoax, a hoax<br />perpetrated by Pelossi and Ms Cameron and the fifth estate, and all of<br />these people who rushed to judgment with such implacable hostility<br />that it's difficult to understand. It's blinded them to the facts...<br />Because they wanted so much to conduct a successful vendetta<br />against me, it blinded them to what was obvious for anybody who was<br />taking a look at it." (Mulroney, May 13, 2009, 35638-35369)<br /><br />• "There are some people in the media - and you know who I'm<br />talking about - who are hell-bent on making certain that after 21 years<br />of inquiries and milions of dollars being spent in pursuit of me and<br />my family, that some significant degree of wrongdoing exists"<br />(Mulroney, May 19,2009,42475)<br /><br />• ". .. the account had never existed. The milions had never<br />existed, and the whole affair was a pure fabrication, based on<br />information provided by a journalist who had become a police<br />informant." (Lavoie, May 4,2009,27532)<br /><br />• "The bank account never existed. The five milion dollars<br />never existed. All that was a fabrication behind which was a police<br />informant who ended up being revealed as a journalist who had made<br />a career out of attacking Brian Mulroney" (Lavoie, May 4, 2009,<br />27657)<br /><br />In a similar vein, Mr. Mulroney's closing submissions claim at paragraph 250 that "... history would later reveal that (Sgt. Fiegenwald) was himself responsible for leaking (the Letter of Request) to journalist/secret informant Stevie Cameron...".<br />These statements suggest, either directly or by clear inference, that: <br /><br />(a) Ms. Cameron knowingly supplied false information to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police which resulted in the criminal investigation of Mr. Mulroney; <br /><br />(b) that she was motivated by animus or malice towards Mr. Mulroney and/or the Mulroney family in doing so; and (c) that she knowingly agreed to be a confidential police informant in or about 1994.<br /><br />Ms. Cameron has at all times taken the position that her professionalism and personal conduct fall outside the scope of the Commission's mandate and terms of reference. In other words, these ex gratia statements, which, in any event, do not rise to the level of probative evidence, are irrelevant to the Commission's work. I observe that no objection was made to this evidence being led (although Commission counsel did not lead or further explore it, and the Commissioner<br />eventually asked Mr. Mulroney to cease repetitive testimony concerning Ms. Cameron: May 19, 2009,41198 to 41199).<br /><br />Nevertheless, Mr. Mulroney did appear to refer back to the issue yet again thereafter, at 42475, cited above.<br /><br /><br />Such objection, it seems to me, would have been appropriate both on<br />the basis of relevance to the Terms of Reference, and on the basis that neither Mr. Mulroney nor Mr. Lavoie have personal knowledge of any of the matters on which they expressed such forceful opinions. Of course, I understand as counsel that a variety of factors may be pertinent to deciding whether to make an objection or whether to simply reserve any position on the value of<br />evidence until closing submissions or other appropriate occasion.<br /><br />Now that Mr. Mulroney in particular has so frequently adverted to my client and her conduct, I assume that the reason we have not received a further subpoena to testify as a witness is that the Commission shares the view that such evidence (whether or not legally admissible) is irrelevant to its mandate and need not be the subject of findings in its Report. I draw this conclusion<br />because, as you know, Ms. Cameron had no objection to testifying as a witness to the extent that she has personal knowledge of facts which are relevant to the Commission's mandate, and which were not the subject of a privilege.<br /><br />Having said that, my client considers it appropriate that the Commission be apprised of her position on these matters. So that there is no doubt about the matter: <br /><br />1. Ms. Cameron denies supplying false information to the R.C.M.P. at any time,<br />knowingly or otherwise. Ms. Cameron provided a selection of documents, principally news clippings and previously-published source documents, to Sgt. Fraser Fiegenwald in or about 1995. Despite her efforts to secure information about any investigation the RCMP might be conducting from Sgt. Fiegenwald for purposes of publishing a story or stories on any such investigation, Sgt. Fiegenwald provided very little information in that regard. In particular, Sgt. Fiegenwald did not supply her with the Letter of Request; that document was not leaked to Ms. Cameron, but to Philip Mathias ofthe Financial Post, by sources unkown to her.<br /><br />2. Ms. Cameron denies being motivated by animus, malice or any other improper<br />purpose in her coverage or other activities relating to Mr. Mulroney and/or members of his family, staff, Party or Government. At all times, Ms. Cameron was motivated by her professional duties to, from time to time, the Globe and Mail, the Ottawa Citizen, Maclean's magazine, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the fifth estate and her publisher Macfarlane Walter & Ross. Her duties were those of an investigative journalist seeking to investigate and publish stories on matters of public concern, including the conduct of Mr. Mulroney particularly while in offce as Prime Minister of Canada. She conducted those duties under senior editorial supervision at all times, and neither she, her employers, or her publisher have ever been sued for anything she has published - including by Mr. Mulroney, who is demonstrably willing to pursue civil litigation in order to protect his reputation. <br /><br />3. Ms. Cameron categorically denies being asked, or agreeing to be a "confidential police informant" in or about 1995. As noted above, in the course of attempting to obtain information from the RC.M.P. for journalistic purposes, she agreed to provide a selection of clippings and already-published documents to the RC.M.P. – an entirely appropriate action. Ms. Cameron was advised then, and at all times understood, that the fact that she provided this information would be disclosed if the investigation ever resulted in charges being laid. It was not until 2001 that, unknown to her, a new investigating officer with whom she had never met or spoken (RC.M.P. Supt. Al Mathews) assigned her a "code" as a confidential informant and applied ex parte for an Order that she be so designated. N one of this was brought to the attention of Ms. Cameron at the time. The question whether Supt. Mathews had acted in good faith in coding her as a "confidential informant" was litigated in 2004 before Then J.; he concluded that Supt. Mathews had acted in good faith, but found it unnecessary to determine whether, as a matter of law, Ms. Cameron was capable of being regarded as a "confidential informant". <br /><br />Certainly, from January 20, 2004, this was an impossible position for the Crown to maintain, as Ms. Cameron unequivocally rejected that status in her letter of that date.<br /><br />Supt. Mathews testified before Then J. on this issue in the course of the Eurocopter proceedings. In his testimony on June 30, 2004, he admitted that:<br /><br />• The R.C.M.P. had greatly exaggerated the number and nature of communications between Ms. Cameron and investigators in its affdavit materials, and the actual number of contacts was "very tiny";<br /><br />• Ms. Cameron's actual role was "peripheral" to the proceedings;<br /><br />• Original versions of the material she provided were obtained directly from the source in the course of the investigation;<br /><br />• She did not approach the RC.M.P.; rather, they requested her assistance;<br /><br />• Giorgio Pelossi, not Cameron, was the principal informant or source at that stage of the case;<br /><br />• None of the RC.M.P. procedures (such as "coding") that must be used in dealing with "confidential informants" were used in her case, until Mathews applied for an order to that effect in August, 2001;<br /><br />• The R.C.M.P. file reflected that she had been told that her meetings with the RC.M.P. would be disclosed to the defence if charges were laid, which was inconsistent with a claim of confidential informant privilege;<br /><br />• The very first time he contacted Cameron in October, 2002, she expressly told him that she had never considered herself to be a "confidential informant", even though he had chosen to "code" her and apply for a court order confirming that in August, 2001;<br /><br />• She had no idea, and the RC.M.P. never advised her, that the issue of whether she was a "confidential informant" was being litigated in a secret trial in Toronto; <br /><br />and<br /><br />• The RC.M.P. file concerning her was a "mess" that did not contain the information normally needed to determine that a witness was a "confidential informant".<br /><br />In the event that Ms. Cameron were called to testify about these matters, she would have testified to the above effect. While I realize the "Ethics Committee" testimony is not formally available to the Commission due to a privilege claim, Ms. Cameron's testimony under oath before the Committee on February 14,2008 may also be referred to in order to appreciate her position.<br /><br />I have outlined all this to you for the simple purpose of ensuring that the Commission fully understands the particulars of Ms. Cameron's position, having received testimony (legally admissible or not) about her conduct, and can make whatever decisions it must make that may affect her, with notice as to what that position is. At the same time, should the Commissioner choose to make adverse comment about Ms. Cameron in his report based on any of the "evidence" before him, I wish only to respectfully advise you that Ms. Cameron of course reserves her rights to seek judicial review of such aspects of the Report.<br /><br />As you know, Ms. Cameron has no wish to interfere with or distract the Commission from its important work. Please do not regard this letter as a departure from that position; rather, Ms. Cameron simply regards it as responsible to ensure that the Commission has the benefit of knowing her position, in the face of the aforementioned commentary by certain witnesses to the contrary.<br /><br />Should you have any questions or concerns about anything herein, please do speak with me about them.<br /><br />Yours truly,<br />Brendan Van NiejenhuisStevie Cameronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12743790393702620918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10966394.post-16558366980449507012010-08-04T21:56:00.012-04:002010-08-04T22:26:19.889-04:00It's here: The end of the Pickton legal processIt's been a crazy few days. <div><br /></div><div>Last week, almost three years after Robert William Pickton was found guilty on six counts of second degree murder, lthe Supreme Court of Canada upheld the guilty verdict and ruled against a new trial. <div><br /></div><div>This week the Crown prosecutors stayed twenty counts of first degree murder against Pickton and the trial judge lifted most of the publication bans although a few remain in place.</div><div><br /></div><div>What all this means is that I am getting closer to sharing the full story. </div><div><br /></div><div>As most of you know, my new book on the case -- <i><b>On the Farm: Robert William Pickton and the Tragic Story of Vancouver's Missing Women <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">(Knopf) -- will be released in a few days as an e-book and soon after that as a hardcover.</span></span></b></i><div><i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></span></b></i></div><div><i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><i><b>On the Farm </b></i>will tell you how this particular serial killer came to be: his family life, his childhood experiences, his friends... and his gradual descent into violent crime. It tells the stories of the women who died on his farm but you will also meet women who escaped. </span></span></b></i></div><div><i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></span></b></i></div><div><i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">You will get to know his closest friend for many years, a woman who finally began to suspect her buddy of the worst crimes imaginable. You will meet the members of the police forces who brought him to justice -- after years of denial that a serial killer could be in their midst. You'll get to know the lawyers who spent years on the case, and the scientists and and students who toiled on the property searching every square inch of soil and buildings to look for evidence.</span></span></b></i></div></div></div><div><i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></span></b></i></div><div><i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">And finally, despite the horrific nature of Pickton's crimes, you will find heroes and heartwarming stories in the unfolding of this case-- the largest and most expensive criminal investigation in Canadian history.</span></span></b></i></div><div><i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></span></b></i></div><div><br /></div>Stevie Cameronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12743790393702620918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10966394.post-68333897328792907162010-07-15T21:38:00.009-04:002010-07-16T11:36:57.480-04:00The Oliphant Commission: Part 1Like many Canadians, I waited with great interest for Justice Jeffrey Oliphant's report on "certain dealings" between arms dealer Karlheinz Schreiber and Brian Mulroney. And when it appeared on May 31, 2010, I was surprised by its severity towards our former prime minister. I expected a slap on the wrist, not a shellacking behind the woodshed. <div><br /></div><div>My interest in Judge Oliphant's findings of the "inappropriate" relationship between Mulroney and Schreiber were very personal because I, too, had been subpoenaed by the Oliphant Commission more than a year earlier. </div><div><br /></div><div>As far as I know I was the only journalist to receive a subpoena and the demands of the Commission shocked me. </div><div><br /></div><div>They required all my research for my 2001 book, <i>The Last Amigo: Karlheinz Schreiber and the Anatomy of a Scandal. </i>And they defined this research to include everything in digital form, all interviews -- regardless of confidentiality --and anything I may have stored in archives. The subpoena also included research for other books that covered the same subject. The research still in my possession, some of which came from the CBC in my collaboration with producer Harvey Cashore, filled fifty binders. The rest, done for <i>On the Take </i>and <i>Blue Trust</i>, is now in university archives and access to this remains restricted.</div><div><br /></div><div>Managing this subpoena would have been a nightmare but I was aided by the extraordinary generosity and kindness of lawyers at Stockwoods, a top civil litigation firm based in Toronto led by Paul Le Vay. Paul and his partners, including Brendan Van Niejenhuis, who worked with me for months, offered to help me <i>pro bono</i>, knowing I could never afford to fight a sweeping federal subpoena like this one. </div><div><br /></div><div>We all agreed, however, that we would ask the Commission to pay for my lawyers' legal bills. After all, the government was paying for Brian Mulroney's lawyers. They also agreed to pay the legal costs for Mulroney's friend, Fred Doucet, after he was also subpoenaed; Doucet had argued that the value of his assets had dropped during the recent banking crisis. But when I applied for financial assistance for my own lawyers, the Commission turned me down. They did not explain why.</div><div><br /></div><div>Stockwoods stood by me. The partners agreed to continue the <i>pro bono </i>agreement. We met with two lawyers from the Commission and when I asked why me, why not other journalists, they replied that <i>The Last Amigo</i> was their "road map." </div><div><br /></div><div>It made no sense to me that they did not subpoena Harvey Cashore -- unless they didn't want to take on the mighty CBC -- but the Commission lawyers, who were courteous and pleasant despite the difficult circumstances, offered no explanation for this. </div><div><br /></div><div>It took nearly a year but the final outcome was extraordinary: My research was safe. The Commission accepted the arguments put forward by Brendan Van Niejenhuis. Nothing except one access to information request I'd made many years earlier as well as the government response to it went to the Commission. Confidential sources and information remained confidential. </div>Stevie Cameronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12743790393702620918noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10966394.post-58393004872451088262009-08-26T15:57:00.006-04:002009-08-26T16:59:52.364-04:00Back in touchMany people have sent notes for this blog over the last few months; I have not published most of them because they contained information that could reveal the sender's identity.<br />Several of these people told me they were concerned about this issue.<br /><br />Some of you had information for me and asked for a response, but because you all are only identified as "Anonymous" I have no way to contact you privately. You can email me at stevie@steviecameron.com with your contact information if you want privacy.<br /><br />I have published a few comments today, comments that do not request anonymity.<br /><br />One is from Robby McRobb who complains he has sent me three notes that have not yet been published. (I have published one or two but they are all more or less in the same vein.)<br /><br />McRobb worked for Mila and Brian Mulroney during their time living at Sussex Drive; he was an extra pair of hands around the house, a driver, a valued helper. He does not like my stories about him in <span style="font-style: italic;">On the Take </span>and he does not like my work on Schreiber/Airbus or any other subject that might concern the Mulroneys. They are fortunate to enjoy such loyalty and support.<br /><br />Among the unpublished notes that have come in, these are the most frequently asked questions:<br /><br />1) Why haven't I been blogging or present in the media during the Oliphant Inquiry?<br />2) Did I watch the coverage of the Oliphant Inquiry?<br />3) Will I be updating <span style="font-style: italic;">The Last Amigo: Karlheinz Schreiber and the Anatomy of a Scandal</span>?<br />4) Why is <span style="font-style: italic;">The Last Amigo</span> not available in bookstores? Has anyone else done a book on this subject?<br />5) Was I ever sued by the Mulroneys or anyone else mentioned in my political books?<br /><br />And here are the answers:<br />1) I wasn't blogging during the Oliphant Inquiry because I had been subpoenaed by the Commissioner.<br />2) I did watch a fair bit of the Inquiry, especially when Richard Wolson was questioning Mulroney.<br />3) Updating <span style="font-style: italic;">The Last Amigo</span> is under consideration. But I wouldn't update; I would do a new book.<br />4) Why isn't <span style="font-style: italic;">The Last Amigo</span> in bookstores? Quite simply, because it is out of print.<br /><br />When<span style="font-style: italic;"> Amigo </span>was published in the late spring of 2001 it was not a success, despite containing the history of Schreiber's long relationship with Mulroney and other facts that have since become public (and are now very much at the forefront of events in Germany). The book was considered extremely dangerous; <span style="font-style: italic;">Maclean's</span> magazine had agreed to publish an excerpt that had the details of the cash withdrawn for Mulroney but when the editor was abruptly fired and replaced by a new editor, Tony Wilson-Smith, the excerpt was cancelled. As well, concerns about possible lawsuits and other issues beyond my control resulted in the book being released late in the season, at a time when people were no longer interested in Schreiber or Mulroney.<br /><br />The book was never published in paperback and even after the issue heated up again, the publishers, McClelland &amp; Stewart, declined to re-issue it or to let me update it. (They also returned the ownership of the book and its contract to me.) That wasn't surprising -- at considerable expense M&amp;S had commissioned two volumes of Mulroney's memoirs. Only one has been published so far.<br /><br />Today,<span style="font-style: italic;"> The Last Amigo</span> is only available secondhand; I order my own copies from AbeBooks.com.<br /><br />And finally, was I ever sued by anyone for anything in these books? No.Stevie Cameronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12743790393702620918noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10966394.post-56159985910408471452008-04-04T17:47:00.009-04:002008-04-04T19:06:16.475-04:00The original tip-off about the Airbus bribes<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp1.blogger.com/_vTlSvZTe9Lw/R_aqYtAD6EI/AAAAAAAAADA/KuLOen9ECh8/s1600-h/original+tip.bmp"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 297px; height: 378px;" src="http://bp1.blogger.com/_vTlSvZTe9Lw/R_aqYtAD6EI/AAAAAAAAADA/KuLOen9ECh8/s320/original+tip.bmp" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5185519362337138754" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family:georgia;">After hunting through boxes of archived research for my 2001 Airbus book, </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;" >The Last Amigo</span><span style="font-family:georgia;">, I found an anonymous note I received in 1988 when I was working at the </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;" >Globe and Mail</span><span style="font-family:georgia;">.</span><br /><br />It's not easy to read here, so here's what it says:<br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">DEAR STEVIE,</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"> YOUR RECENT ARTICLE IN THE GLOBE'S REPORT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE ON GCI AND FRANK MOORES WAS A GOOD ONE BUT YOU MISSED THE BEST PART. FRANK AND HIS FRIENDS ARE ABOUT TO STRIKE IT REALLY RICH AND YOU AND I ARE GOING TO HELP HIM. SOUNDS GOOD, EH? READ ON.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"> FRANK HAS ARRANGED FOR AIR CANADA TO BUY $2 BILLION WORTH OF FRENCH AIRPLANES, AND HE GETS A COOL 5% OR $100 MILLION. OF COURSE, THE FRENCH WILL PAY THE COMMISSION, BUT $300 MILLION WILL COME FROM OTTAWA, AND YOU KNOW YOU AND I PAY FOR THAT. CHECK IT OUT.<br /><br /></span><br />The note arrived after the newspaper's February, 1988 <span style="font-style: italic;">Report on Business Magazine</span> published a story I'd written called "Like Magic," about Frank Moores' lobbying firm, Government Consultants International. In this, I listed several of the company's clients including Messerschmidt-Bolkow-Blohm.<br /><br />And about this company I noted:<br /><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: justify;">"The German firm is part of a consortium that wants to sell Air Canada a plane known as the Airbus. MBB retained GCI early in 1985 to push its case. Moores came in for heated criticism in Parliament after his appointment to the board of Air Canada in March, 1985, tossed him into what was seen as a conflict of interest. He subsequently resigned from the Air Canada post."<br /><br />Soon after the ROB story appeared, the anonymous letter arrived at the paper.<br />Unlike most anonymous letters I received, this one felt like the real thing.<br /><br />I chased the tip for a long time but it was impossible to prove until 1999 and impossible - for legal reasons - to publish until 2001.<br /><br />Someday I hope the person who wrote this note will get in touch again.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><span style=""><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shapetype id="_x0000_t75" coordsize="21600,21600" spt="75" preferrelative="t" path="m@4@5l@4@11@9@11@9@5xe" filled="f" stroked="f"> <v:stroke joinstyle="miter"> <v:formulas> <v:f eqn="if lineDrawn pixelLineWidth 0"> <v:f eqn="sum @0 1 0"> <v:f eqn="sum 0 0 @1"> <v:f eqn="prod @2 1 2"> <v:f eqn="prod @3 21600 pixelWidth"> <v:f eqn="prod @3 21600 pixelHeight"> <v:f eqn="sum @0 0 1"> <v:f eqn="prod @6 1 2"> <v:f eqn="prod @7 21600 pixelWidth"> <v:f eqn="sum @8 21600 0"> <v:f eqn="prod @7 21600 pixelHeight"> <v:f eqn="sum @10 21600 0"> </v:formulas> <v:path extrusionok="f" gradientshapeok="t" connecttype="rect"> <o:lock ext="edit" aspectratio="t"> </v:shapetype><v:shape id="_x0000_i1025" type="#_x0000_t75" style="'width:6in;"> <v:imagedata src="file:///C:\DOCUME~1\STEVIE~1\LOCALS~1\Temp\msohtml1\01\clip_image001.png" title=""> </v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--><!--[endif]--></span><br /></div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shapetype id="_x0000_t75" coordsize="21600,21600" spt="75" preferrelative="t" path="m@4@5l@4@11@9@11@9@5xe" filled="f" stroked="f"> <v:stroke joinstyle="miter"> <v:formulas> <v:f eqn="if lineDrawn pixelLineWidth 0"> <v:f eqn="sum @0 1 0"> <v:f eqn="sum 0 0 @1"> <v:f eqn="prod @2 1 2"> <v:f eqn="prod @3 21600 pixelWidth"> <v:f eqn="prod @3 21600 pixelHeight"> <v:f eqn="sum @0 0 1"> <v:f eqn="prod @6 1 2"> <v:f eqn="prod @7 21600 pixelWidth"> <v:f eqn="sum @8 21600 0"> <v:f eqn="prod @7 21600 pixelHeight"> <v:f eqn="sum @10 21600 0"> </v:formulas> <v:path extrusionok="f" gradientshapeok="t" connecttype="rect"> <o:lock ext="edit" aspectratio="t"> </v:shapetype><v:shape id="_x0000_i1025" type="#_x0000_t75" style="'width:6in;"> <v:imagedata src="file:///C:\DOCUME~1\STEVIE~1\LOCALS~1\Temp\msohtml1\01\clip_image001.png" title=""> </v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--> </p><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shapetype id="_x0000_t75" coordsize="21600,21600" spt="75" preferrelative="t" path="m@4@5l@4@11@9@11@9@5xe" filled="f" stroked="f"> <v:stroke joinstyle="miter"> <v:formulas> <v:f eqn="if lineDrawn pixelLineWidth 0"> <v:f eqn="sum @0 1 0"> <v:f eqn="sum 0 0 @1"> <v:f eqn="prod @2 1 2"> <v:f eqn="prod @3 21600 pixelWidth"> <v:f eqn="prod @3 21600 pixelHeight"> <v:f eqn="sum @0 0 1"> <v:f eqn="prod @6 1 2"> <v:f eqn="prod @7 21600 pixelWidth"> <v:f eqn="sum @8 21600 0"> <v:f eqn="prod @7 21600 pixelHeight"> <v:f eqn="sum @10 21600 0"> </v:formulas> <v:path extrusionok="f" gradientshapeok="t" connecttype="rect"> <o:lock ext="edit" aspectratio="t"> </v:shapetype><v:shape id="_x0000_i1025" type="#_x0000_t75" style="'width:6in;"> <v:imagedata src="file:///C:\DOCUME~1\STEVIE~1\LOCALS~1\Temp\msohtml1\01\clip_image001.png" title=""> </v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--><br /><!--[endif]--></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[endif]--></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /><br /></div><br /></div>Stevie Cameronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12743790393702620918noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10966394.post-67875553119794332772008-02-26T19:29:00.015-05:002008-04-04T19:07:05.360-04:00Who was Bruce Verchere? And why did Karlheinz Schreiber raise his name?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp1.blogger.com/_vTlSvZTe9Lw/R_azitAD6GI/AAAAAAAAADQ/66-HqFJAu1U/s1600-h/ProductImage.aspx.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="http://bp1.blogger.com/_vTlSvZTe9Lw/R_azitAD6GI/AAAAAAAAADQ/66-HqFJAu1U/s320/ProductImage.aspx.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5185529429740480610" border="0" /></a><br /><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" ><br /> Unless you were watching Mr. Schreiber's appearance before the Commons' Ethics Committee on February 25, you would never know that he raised, again and again, the name of Bruce Verchere. And members of this committee asked me, on February 14, several questions about Verchere.</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" > </span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" ><br /><br />Who is this man? And why does he figure in the Mulroney-Schreiber story?</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" > </span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" ><br /><br />The short answer is that Verchere was the tax lawyer who managed Mulroney's blind trust between 1984 and 1993.</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" > </span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" > Verchere is also the central character in </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >Blue Trust: The Author, The Lawyer, His Wife, and her Money</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >, a book I published in 1998.<br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >A native of Kamloops, B.C., he graduated from the University of British Columbia in 1963 with a law degree and began his career as a government tax lawyer in Ottawa.<br /><br />He married a beautiful woman, Lynne Walters, who was also a brilliant computer systems expert and they eventually moved to Montreal where he developed a large tax practice. Lynne Verchere established a company to produce software she had developed that would run billing and time management systems for law firms; at the same time, she managed the financial aspects of her husband's law practice.</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" > </span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" ><br /><br />The Vercheres prospered, with much of their income generated by Lynne Verchere's business. They bought a large house in Westmount and became part of Brian and Mila Mulroney's social circle. </span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" ><br /><br />Verchere had several well-known clients but the best known were Mulroney and the author, Arthur Hailey, famous for his blockbuster books </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >Hotel </span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >and</span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" > Airport</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >.<br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" > In Hailey's case, Verchere helped him move from California to settle in the Bahamas, a tax haven, in order to avoid punitive U.S. income taxes on earnings from these books and their movie versions.</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" > </span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" ><br /><br />When Mulroney was elected prime minister in 1984, Verchere managed his blind trust as his financial trustee. He was also his tax lawyer. </span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >Both Bruce and Lynne Verchere received patronage appointments from the government during this period.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" ><br /></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >Verchere developed a skill in hiding money. After his wife sold her company to Prentice Hall in 1987 for nearly $17-million, he moved the money around through Panamanian shell companies and other offshore entities until it finally landed in two banks in Geneva: Darier Hentsch et Cie and Pictet Cie, both specializing in wealth management and infinite discretion.<br /><br />Bruce Verchere used these banks for some of his other clients as well, including the Haileys.</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" > </span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" ><br /><br />But to her shock, Lynne Verchere discovered that her husband had put the money out of her reach. Not only had he moved it into Swiss accounts that she couldn't access - and was spending it recklessly - but he was having a blazing affair with Arthur Hailey's daughter, Diane, a much younger woman. Adding insult to injury, he and Diane were expecting twins.</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" ><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >With a great deal of effort, Lynne Verchere succeeded in obtaining an injunction to freeze her assets; the injunction, held in the Montreal courthouse, spells out the extent of her husband's fraudulent activities to hide the money.<br /><br />And her lawyers made it clear to Bruce Verchere that unless he dumped Diane Hailey, returned to Lynne and gave her back her fortune, she would turn over damaging information to the RCMP and to her husband's law partners with information about his activities on behalf of others.</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" > </span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" ><br /><br />A strange coincidence appears at this point. The lawyer acting for Bruce Verchere in these grinding, emotional negotiations was Claude-Armand Sheppard, the same lawyer who, acting for the federal government, questioned Brian Mulroney three years later when Mulroney sued the government and the RCMP for libel. It was Sheppard who, in 1996, asked the former prime minister about his relationship with Karlheinz Schreiber and received the vague answer about an occasional cup of coffee together.</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" > </span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" ><br /><br />Verchere agreed to his wife's conditions. On August 3 an out-of-court settlement was signed and he moved back into the family home. On August 28 he walked into his bathroom with a shotgun, put the barrel in his mouth and pulled the trigger. Mulroney attended his funeral as a pallbearer.</span> <p style="text-align: left;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> As the </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:100%;" >Globe and Mail</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> reported earlier this month - on February 12, 2008 - "Mr. Schreiber has also testified that in the early 1990s, Mr. Doucet asked him to send a portion of the secret commissions from the 1988 sale of Airbus airplanes to Air Canada to Mr. Mulroney's lawyer in Geneva. Mr. Doucet vigorously denied the claim, calling it a 'fabrication. I did not know any lawyers in Geneva, Switzerland, or indeed anywhere else in that country,' he told the committee."</span></p><p style="text-align: left;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> This week Schreiber went back on the attack.<br /></span></p><p style="text-align: left;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> First he told the committee that the lawyer in Geneva was Bruce Verchere.<br /></span></p><p style="text-align: left;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> When they appeared not to notice, he hauled them back to his statement saying, "You guys haven't listened." He stated plainly that Verchere was Mulroney's financial trustee and that the "lawyer in Geneva" was Bruce Verchere.<br /></span></p><div style="text-align: justify;font-family:lucida grande;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /><br /></span><br /><br /><br /></div><br /></div>Stevie Cameronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12743790393702620918noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10966394.post-516791163754797392008-02-09T14:46:00.000-05:002008-02-11T11:20:09.774-05:00Francois Martin: interview notes, July 1993<p class="MsoNormal"><?xml:namespace prefix = o /><o:p><br /></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:130%;">Interview with Francois Martin, Montreal, Friday morning, July 16, 1993</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Note: I interviewed Francois Martin several times over the years and at the bottom of these notes I have attached one of the stories I wrote about him for The Globe and Mail in 1990.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><em>NB: These notes are a<strong> summary</strong> of the interview done for </em><span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">my book, On the Take: Crime, Corruption and Greed in the Mulroney Years, which was published in October 1994. Because it was such a key interview for the book, my research associate Rod Macdonell, a senior investigative reporter at the Montreal Gazette, accompanied me. Francois was nervous about being taped so we decided two of us should be there. Rod would be the main note-taker while I talked to Francois, but I took notes as well. We checked the information he gave us with many sources, including the people he mentioned - Joe Plaskett, Bonnie Brownlee and the rest. Not all of them returned our calls or responded but most did. Most of the following information appeared in On the Take and it has never been challenged.<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">My research material and interviews are all stored in the archives at York University; I donated them to the Nathanson Centre for the Study of Organized Crime and Corruption at Osgoode Hall Law School. But I was able to find a great deal of this information still stored in my computers. Here is the summary of the first set of notes we made after talking to Francois that morning in a three-hour interview. The explanatory note (next paragraph, below) was written at the time these notes were taken.</span><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold"></span>Rod took the notes and is typing them up in full. The following is just a list of topics raised and Martin's comments in point form, based on Rod's interview notes. I have pulled together comments made throughout this three-hour interview into the appropriate topics. Rod's notes will be more extensive.<br />Martin was the Mulroneys' chef for four years, from early in 1985 until he quit late in 1989. He had been working as a chef at the National Arts Centre where head chef Kurt Waldele arranged for him to be interviewed for the job at <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 /><st1:street st="on"><st1:address st="on">Sussex Drive</st1:address></st1:street>. He competed and won. I interviewed him several years ago and have been in touch with him ever since. A few years ago he wrote a book about his time at <st1:street st="on"><st1:address st="on">Sussex Drive</st1:address></st1:street> and was unable to find a publisher; Jacques Lanctot in <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Montreal</st1:place></st1:city> (the former FLQ terrorist) told me he felt he could make the manuscript into something publishable but was unwilling to take it one because he feared losing his federal publishing grant.<br />Martin has had a number of well-received gallery showings of painting he did during and after his years at 24 <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Sussex</st1:place></st1:country-region>. Many of the works were devastating portraits of life inside <st1:street st="on"><st1:address st="on">24 Sussex Drive</st1:address></st1:street>; La Diva Mila is the best known. Others were witty snapshots of political events in the houses - meetings, receptions and so on. His paintings have been praised by such people as Charles Hill, curator of the Canadian collection at the National Gallery and the head of the Art Bank. The galleries include Ufundi in <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Ottawa</st1:city></st1:place>, ?? in <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Toronto</st1:city></st1:place> and ?? in <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Montreal</st1:city></st1:place>. The last <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Montreal</st1:place></st1:city> exhibition closed a few weeks ago.</p><p class="MsoNormal">Today [1993] he is living in <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Montreal</st1:place></st1:city>, looking for work as a chef and continuing to paint.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">24 </span><st1:country-region style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" st="on"><st1:place st="on">Sussex</st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold"> </span></span><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">-</span> Mila said to Francois that there wasn't a lot of stuff there when she got there and there wouldn't be a lot when she left. She said the same about <st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">Harrington</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">Lake</st1:placetype></st1:place>.<br />Why did she do an inventory? Because of the [April 1987] story about Giovanni [Mowinckel, the interior designer who worked on the official residences, work that was partly paid for by the PC Canada Fund]. She heard the story was coming and she was screaming around the house and saying she was going to kill him. She was up till 3 a.m. the night before the story ran. She couldn't sleep.<br />Mila's insomnia - She got a prescription from her father [a <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Westmount</st1:place></st1:city> psychiatrist] for sleeping pills.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">The Lemieux painting -</span></span> [a painting by Quebec painter, Jean-Paul Lemieux who died in 1990] Francois loved it and told her [Mila Mulroney that] he wanted to buy it; she said he couldn't because he didn't have the money. She said she owned it, that Brian had bought it for her a long time ago for $17,000.<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold"></span>Why is she saying this?<span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold"></span> "Because Mila wants everything." Bonnie [Brownlee, Mila Mulroney's assistant] told him it was Jean-Paul Lemieux's and the painter wanted it back. Bonnie called Lemieux to try to placate him. Francois painted a copy of the painting in his own picture, La Nouvelle Cuisine Quebecoise-Constitution, a scene of Mulroney, Lucien Bouchard, Robert Bourassa and Jacques Parizeau sitting around the dining room table at 24 <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Sussex</st1:place></st1:country-region>. Behind them, on the wall, is the Lemieux painting, <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Le Refectoire</span>.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold"><span style="font-size:130%;">Shopping</span> </span>- <span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold"></span>Mrs. Sauve [former Governor-General Jeanne Sauve] went shopping with her [Mila Mulroney] to Serge et Real's - the store where both women bought a lot of clothes in <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Montreal</st1:city></st1:place>.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Cash for shopping</span></span> - <span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold"></span>I'd go to [Fred] Doucet's office in the PMO about once a week and pick up an envelope with cash, about $10,000 or $11,000 each time. We'd get money before a shopping trip to <st1:state st="on">New York</st1:state> as well - it usually cost about $15,000 for three days and she'd stay at the <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Pierre</st1:place></st1:city>. There was no reference to the money, we'd just chitchat. It was in a brown envelope, letter-size, unsealed. It was in $1,000 bills, and it may have been in hundreds as well. Sometimes late at night she'd [Mila Mulroney] call me and give me $8,000 to $10,000 in cash and ask me to put it in the bank. I was nervous because I had to take it home overnight. I put it in the big bank on <st1:street st="on"><st1:address st="on">Sparks Street</st1:address></st1:street>, the one with the big pillars on the north side [the Bank of Montreal]. Cash came in like it was falling from the sky.<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">Derek McSweeney, the chauffeur and Mike McSweeney's brother, would go to get the money sometimes. He [Derek McSweeney]often had disagreements and quit three or four times during the time Francois was there. He [Francois] stopped picking up the cash when Doucet left.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">The Plaskett portrait</span>.</span> [A portrait of Mila Mulroney painted by Canadian artist Joe Plaskett in Paris and mentioned to <span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">SC </span>by Mordecai Richler; Plaskett had a great deal of trouble getting paid for it and finally Helen Vari paid him.]</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold"></span>She got it. [the Plaskett portrait] She brought it home and unrolled it and asked me what kind of frame should it go in. Mrs. [Helen] Vari is the one who introduced her to Plaskett. the Varis have a house in Nice and Francois spent a short holiday there once.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Helen Vari </span></span>used to come with big suitcases full of dresses and suits for Mila; I'd take them up to her bedroom. She'd bring 20 dresses at a time. <span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold"></span>How many in all?<span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold"> </span></span>Maybe 200.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Jewellery. </span></span>One time she received a big brooch as a gift from a head of state. Can't remember the name, I think its starts with H. Maybe Hussein? She had Lou Goldberg [the jeweller she uses in <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Montreal</st1:place></st1:city>] melt it down for her because it was too big to wear; he made her a ring and earrings and something else. This same head of state also gave her a baby grand piano.<br />Gifts for heads of state. Mila often bought gifts for visiting heads of state [under the rules, she is allowed to spend up to $1,000 each for a gift for a foreign dignitary]. Often she would buy three or four items, give the visitor one and keep or give away the others. [This story can be supported by xxxxxxxx, who sold gifts for foreign dignitaries to Mila.]</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Senneville property?</span></span><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold"> </span>I think she bought property in Senneville. She told me she did.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Booze</span></span>. Francois would order and pay for cartons of wine and liquor; she would send these to her relatives.<br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold"></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold"><span style="font-size:130%;">Ross Johnston</span>: </span><span style="font-size:100%;">[former CEO of Nabisco; led unsuccesful leveraged buyout effort for the company in 1987, a saga that was the subject of the bestseller, <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Barbarians at the Gate</span>]<br />Packages from Nabisco arrived all the time - big boxes of food and stuff.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Shopping</span></span><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">: </span>There was a discussion about Robby McRobb [ran errands for the Mulroneys] who had a friend inside customs. A company would be billed for all the costs of a package - customs, shipping etc ... <span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold"></span>What was she bringing in? <span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold"></span>Wine, clothes, shoes. Things like that. Robby would fix the bills. Robby wanted a green card and the Mulroneys were supposed to help him get one; they played with that. They had to find a way to escape my story on how they got through customs without much checking so they came up with a method of shipping goods.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:130%;"><st1:country-region style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" st="on"><st1:place st="on">China</st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">:</span></span><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold"> </span>She [MIla Mulroney] bought the blue and white china (she tried to sell to the government in 1993) through the National Arts centre; it was paid for by the PMO as a bill for waiters or food. It's a Fitz and Floyd pattern, not fancy [Starburst, according to NCC]. CHECK CHINA PATTERN with Allan Stark at Ashley's; he knows all patterns, xxxxxxx says. They bought enough to give Bernard and Madeleine Roy a service for 12; they gave them half at Christmas and the other half on a birthday. They kept the <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Roy</st1:place></st1:city> china hidden in the chef's office in the basement.<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Bobby Orr:</span></span> He came to Harrington [Harrington Lake, PM's summer residence] one time as a guest; he came in his own camper van, a big one like a Winnebago. They put him in the guest cottage which was full of mice; he left the next day.<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Ivana Pivnicki:</span></span> [Mila Mulroney's sister] I think Ivana was jealous of Mila. Mila met Brian at Expo 67 where she was a hostess [I can't believe this - she would have been too young; Sawatsky says it was the tennis club in 1972 when she was 19; better check this...] Mila got Ivana a job at Expo 87 in Vancouver so she could find a husband. Mila frequently sent Robby McRobb to Ivana's apartment in <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Toronto</st1:place></st1:city> to help her paint it or do odd jobs. Mila was trying to get a job for her sister every two months. Ivana was always changing jobs.<br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Mulroney:</span> </span>Drank Nyquil every night. A lot. A bottle every night? The butler was always saying, 'we're out of Nyquil again.'<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Coats:</span></span> Brian and Mila had a major argument once abaout her wearing a fur coat. She wanted to wear a fur coat but Barbara Bush was wearing a cloth coat. Mulroney wanted her to wear a cloth coat and they had a fight about it. Did they fight a lot? Yes. He is quiet - she's a screamer.<br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Bonnie Brownlee:</span></span> Had two fur coats. She was a little Mila. Her place was like a museum and cluttered with antiques. One time Mila had a wedding shower for Bonnie - she said she should invite wealthy people to get good presents. So they invited Mrs. Desmarais and Mrs. Vari. They came. Francois also catered Bonnie's wedding to Bill Fox at 24 <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Sussex</st1:place></st1:country-region> - Bonnie wasn't happy about this - she would have liked to control her own wedding. [Bonnie Brownlee confirmed this to me in an interview in 1994.] They also wanted to set Bonnie up with a career as a TV reporter like Pamela Wallin.<br /><st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on"></st1:place></st1:city></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:130%;"><st1:city style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" st="on"><st1:place st="on">Palm Beach</st1:place></st1:city></span>: Every vacation or parliamentary break they went to <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Palm Beach</st1:place></st1:city> and they almost always stayed at Moses Deitcher's house there. One time the house was unavailable and Robby McRobb went down a week ahead to get another place ready. One time they invited Francois to come as a holiday but when he got there he found he was supposed to cook. Francois stayed at a motel nearby where Bill Pristanski knew the owner. Mulroneys received many people there and they always took a butler and nanny who flew in a separate plane so they wouldn't be on the flight manifest.<br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold"></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Safe: </span></span>24 <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Sussex</st1:place></st1:country-region> has a safe behind a picture in the front hall, on the way to the den. They installed a big safe, like a refrigerator, in Francois' basement office. Rick Morgan would come and put money in the safe; he brought it in an attache case and took it out - usually a brown letter size envelope about an inch thick. Rick would remove it as well. He knew the combination of the safe. He also saw Mulroney take some. This basement office was where "we hid the dishes" [the <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Roy</st1:place></st1:city> china]; they also kept leather photo albums, put together on a monthly basis.<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Plastic surgery:</span></span> While he was there Mila had a lot of cosmetic surgery done. Her legs - although he doesn't know if this was vein or liposuction works. He says she had her breasts enlarged. She said to me "Brian likes that - I showed him last night."<br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold"></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Vistors: </span></span>Who came most often to <st1:street st="on"><st1:address st="on">Sussex Drive</st1:address></st1:street>? What about media? Bernard Derome [Quebec broadcaster] came often. Derome once came into Francois' shop in St. Adele [Martin had a catering busines and food shop in Ste Adele, in the Laurentians, for a short while] and when he saw him in there and the painting on the wall, Derome stared, turned and walked out. Jeff Simpson [colunist for the Gloeb and Mail] was there a lot. Non-media guests included [Michel] Cogger (frequently), [Jean] Bazin, [Guy] Charbonneau (often for business lunches and social dinners), Don Matthews, Charles Bronfman, Hartland ? Price, ? Henderson, Joe Stewart (not frequent but often enough), Winser, Lortie.<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Staff: </span></span>There were a lot of Filippinos - they wanted their citizenships. And Cathy Auchleck - she came as a nanny for Nicholas and wound up going through law school while living with them. They paid. She is now their lawyer. The staff was resentful that she went from being a staff member to a guest.<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><br /></p><div style="FONT-FAMILY: arial; TEXT-ALIGN: justify">GLOBE AND MAIL - DOCUMENT 1 - Page 1 of 3<br />:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::<br />920440230 THU FEB.13,1992 PAGE: C3<br />CLASS: The Arts<br />DATELINE: WORDS: 635<br />:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::<br /><br />** NOISES OFF **<br />** The Cook, The Chief, His Wife and Her Painter **<br />F RANCOIS Martin,*chef*for Brian and Mila Mulroney from 1985 to 1989,<br />made quite a stir in Ottawa in 1990 when he displayed paintings of his<br />former employer lounging in her bed or issuing orders from the top of the<br />staircase at 24 Sussex Drive.<br />Now Martin, who enthusiasts describe as a natural talent, has found a<br /><st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Toronto</st1:place></st1:city> dealer - David Johnson of the Young Fox Gallery - and is showing<br />off more of his peinture a clef on <st1:street st="on"><st1:address st="on">Queen Street East</st1:address></st1:street>.<br />Among the small selection is Royal Icing, a happy wedding scene with a<br />self-portrait of the*chef*in the background. The painting refers to the<br />marriage of lobbyist Fred Doucet, a Mulroney crony. The wedding was held<br />at 24 <st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on">Sussex</st1:country-region></st1:place>, and Martin, whose salary was paid by the federal government,<br />says he baked the cake and did the catering. Fleur de Peau shows Mila and<br />Brian unwrapping a landscape, a painting of <st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">Harrington</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">Lake</st1:placetype></st1:place> that Martin<br />gave them as a gift. Xmas Wrapping Looking for a Gift shows a massive<br />gift-wrapping session on the dining room table at 24 <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Sussex</st1:place></st1:country-region>. Martin says<br />the Mulroneys would rewrap gifts they had received and didn't like, so<br />they could pass them on to others.<br />Martin now runs a catering business in the Laurentians and paints part-<br />time. He says he has more tales to tell of life at 24 <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Sussex</st1:place></st1:country-region>, but still<br />can't find a publisher for his autobiography.<br /><br />GLOBE AND MAIL - DOCUMENT 2 - Page 1 of 2<br />:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::<br />901520116 FRI JUN.01,1990 PAGE: A6<br />CLASS: Editorial<br />DATELINE: WORDS: 314<br />:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::<br /><br />** What's cooking at 24 <st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on">Sussex</st1:country-region></st1:place>? **<br />So what's on the menu at <st1:street st="on"><st1:address st="on">24 Sussex Drive</st1:address></st1:street> this weekend? Roast Prime<br />Minister a la Meech? Premier Salad with One-Island dressing? Warmed-over<br />compromise (best before June 23)? The cut of a thousand beefs? Buttered<br />first ministers? Carrots on a stick? Boneless chicken or unrepentant<br />turkey?<br />Yesterday it was*Chef's*Surprise, a 300-page offering whipped up by<br />*Francois*Martin,*who was*chef*at the Prime Minister's residence from<br />January, 1985, to May, 1989. Now that it has simmered for a year, it has<br />been served up to a dozen <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Quebec</st1:place></st1:state> publishers, none of whom show any sign of<br />salivation. Gastro-politics does not seem to tickle their palates, so Mr.<br />Martin has taken his memoirs on the road, hoping <st1:place st="on"><st1:state st="on">Ontario</st1:state></st1:place> will show more<br />interest.<br />Throughout history, the servants' quarters and the kitchen have proved<br />to be a notoriously leaky part of the domestic scene for celebrities.<br /><st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">Buckingham</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">Palace</st1:placetype></st1:place>, a short coach ride from the very heart of chequebook<br />journalism, has from time to time reacted with stiff dismay to revelations<br />that sprang from the packed and palpitating diaries of departing staff.<br />In <st1:city st="on">Ottawa</st1:city>, the Prime Minister's Office is no more amused than Queen<br /><st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Victoria</st1:place></st1:state> might have been. Denials have been issued - dealing, among other<br />things, with Mr. Martin's account of food boxes, prepared and dispatched<br />at Mrs. Mulroney's behest to her relatives. The*chef*is sticking to his<br />guns but, in any case, there does not seem to be anything dreadfully<br />scandalous here. One might be surprised to learn that the*chef*at <st1:street st="on"><st1:address st="on">24</st1:address></st1:street><br /><st1:street st="on"><st1:address st="on">Sussex Drive</st1:address></st1:street> would sometimes work from 7 a.m. to 1 a.m. without overtime.<br />Our thoughtless prime minister, we learn, would also occasionally bring<br />several people home for lunch without letting him know they were coming.<br />Or how they spelled their names.<br />The wonder is that Mr. Martin was not overwhelmed by fatigue. Or<br />writer's cramp.<br /><br /><br />GLOBE AND MAIL - DOCUMENT 3 - Page 1 of 8<br />:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::<br />901510041 THU MAY.31,1990 PAGE: A1 (ILLUS)<br />BYLINE: STEVIE CAMERON<br />CLASS: News<br />DATELINE: Montreal PQ WORDS: 1620<br />:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::<br /><br />***Chef*gives glimpse of life **<br />** inside 24 Sussex Drive **<br />BY STEVIE CAMERON<br />The Globe and Mail<br />MONTREAL<br />Most of the time, when a staff member leaves a Canadian politician's<br />household the leave-taking is discreet in the extreme and there is no<br />kiss-and-tell afterward.<br />One of Prime Minister Brian Mulroney 's employees chose a different<br />way to leave, a sort of cook-and-tell.<br />The Prime Minister's Office is not amused.<br />*Francois*Martin,*who was*chef*at 24 Sussex Dr. from January, 1985,<br />until May, 1989, spent last fall writing a 300-page history of the<br />upstairs-downstairs life in the Prime Minister's residence, a history he<br />reconstructed from his own records, menus and guest lists.<br />The manuscript offers a look at life at 24 <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Sussex</st1:place></st1:country-region>, one in which the<br />staff call the Mulroneys simply "Mr." and "Mrs." and in which Brian<br />Mulroney is almost a minor figure.<br />"He's quiet," explained Mr. Martin in an interview. "And he is always<br />going on diets. But when he gets upset about something on the news at<br />night, he'll come into the kitchen for something like cookies and Mrs.<br />tries to talk him out of it."<br />Mr. Martin has taken the manuscript to a dozen publishers in <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Quebec</st1:place></st1:state>; so<br />far all of them have turned him down. <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Ontario</st1:place></st1:state> publishers are now looking<br />at it.<br />The manuscript is not about the political crises of the government, but<br />of day-to-day domestic life, enlivened by the parade of important visitors<br />for whom the*chef*created extravagant dishes.<br />But his tale of life at 24 <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Sussex</st1:place></st1:country-region> has caused prime ministerial staff to<br />denounce him as untruthful.<br />According to Mr. Martin, for example, Mila Mulroney asked him to<br />prepare and send monthly care packages of food, cases of wines, regular<br />deliveries of fresh flowers, and even cleaning supplies to her relatives.<br />The PMO has emphatically denied his recollections, saying that Mr.<br />Mulroney is the first Canadian prime minister to pay for his own food.<br />Although Mr. Martin did all the grocery shopping, charging most of the<br />food on accounts at both wholesalers and small specialty shops, he said he<br />did not know who paid the bills because they all went to the PMO, usually<br />to Mrs. Mulroney's assistant, Bonnie Brownlee.<br />Mr. Martin said Mrs. Mulroney asked him every month to pack boxes of<br />food - including hot meals such as veal scaloppine packed in thermal<br />containers - as well as staple goods and cleaning supplies for her<br />parents, Dmitri and Bogdana Pivnicki in <st1:city st="on">Montreal</st1:city>, and less frequently for<br />her sister Ivana Pivnicki in <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Toronto</st1:place></st1:city>. Raiding his bulk supplies, he said<br />he would tuck such items as bottles of Windex and cans of <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Ajax</st1:place></st1:city> in among<br />the groceries.<br />He said he often delivered the boxes himself. He was also asked to send<br />cases of wine and spirits to the Pivnickis and would arrange for bouquets<br />of fresh flowers from the Rideau Hall greenhouses to go to <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Montreal</st1:place></st1:city>.<br />Gilbert Lavoie, the Prime Minister's press secretary, says Mr. Martin's<br />stories are untrue.<br />"The stories of the shipment of food, wine and flowers are false," Mr.<br />Lavoie said. "When her mother visits her, all Mrs. Mulroney does is give<br />her the usual care packages anyone would give." Mr. Lavoie added that the<br />Mulroneys paid for their own groceries.<br />In 1984, Mr. Mulroney said he would pay for his family's groceries at<br />24 <st1:country-region st="on">Sussex</st1:country-region>, and his office later announced that he had sent a $4,000 cheque<br />to Revenue <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Canada</st1:place></st1:country-region> in 1985 to cover food costs for six months.<br />"When you pay your own bills," Mr. Lavoie said, "you can do what you<br />want with the food, the wines, the flowers."<br />He said he had no receipts or proof that the Mulroneys paid these<br />bills, and had no idea how much money they have spent on food. "I don't<br />have figures in front of me. It is his private life."<br />Mr. Lavoie also objected, he said, to "asking us to prove negatives for<br />matters that go back in time. I don't have a week to search for documents<br />that I don't think are needed."<br />Two years ago, Mr. Martin said, he spent two weeks cooking food for<br />Mrs. Mulroney's brother's wedding after the Pivnicki family decided a<br />$10,000 catering estimate from exclusive Montreal caterer Roger Colas was<br />too high.<br />Mr. Martin also baked and decorated a four-layer wedding cake for Jovan<br />Pivnicki and his bride, Manuela Suares.<br />Mr. Martin, 28, a native of Maniwaki, Que., is a graduate of <st1:state st="on">Quebec</st1:state>'s<br />highly regarded hotel school, L'Institut de tourisme et d'hotellerie de<br /><st1:state st="on">Quebec</st1:state>, in <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Montreal</st1:city></st1:place>. After working at two <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Ottawa</st1:place></st1:city> restaurants, he moved to<br />the National Arts Centre for a year. He competed against 11 other chefs<br />for the job at 24 <st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on">Sussex</st1:country-region></st1:place>, and at first after he joined the staff on Jan.<br />28, 1985, at a salary of $28,000 a year, he loved it.<br />"It was exciting," he recalled. "Everything was fun and within two<br />weeks I saw that I was making a difference. And my parents were so proud<br />of me."<br />There were the state dinners for President George Bush in <st1:city st="on">Ottawa</st1:city>, the<br />Queen in <st1:city st="on">Quebec City</st1:city> and the Prince and Princess of Wales in <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Vancouver</st1:city></st1:place>,<br />when he was able to create splendid dinners that won him raves. There was<br />the luncheon to honor Canadian fashion designers, for which he created<br />little soup crackers shaped like scissors and named each dish, such as<br />crepes de chine, for a fabric or a design.<br />By the time Mr. Martin left, his salary had gone up to $41,000.<br />(According to a federal cabinet order-in-council, passed May 17, the new<br />*chef,*John LeBlanc, earns between $51,000 and $53,000.)<br />Life at 24 <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Sussex</st1:place></st1:country-region> was so glamorous that at first Mr. Martin accepted<br />the long hours and the fact that, as he said, "I had no life of my own."<br />He said he worked from 7 a.m., when he arrived to prepare the children's<br />breakfast, until 12 or 1 a.m. six to seven days a week without overtime<br />pay.<br />But he did start to complain about thoughtlessness. The Prime Minister,<br />he said, often would bring several people home for lunch without notice.<br />"The first I'd hear was when the RCMP would phone me as they came in<br />the gates. When I said something, Mrs. said, 'Francois, you have to be<br />creative.'<br />One of Mr. Martin's frequent chores, he said, was to drive to <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Montreal</st1:place></st1:city><br />to pick up clothes and jewelry from various stores for Mrs. Mulroney. He<br />never paid for anything, he said; bills were managed by Ms Brownlee.<br />Using charge accounts, Mr. Martin did all the grocery shopping for the<br />prime ministerial home, buying from wholesale suppliers as well as from<br />specialists in <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Ottawa</st1:place></st1:city>'s Byward Market. A constant irritant, however, was<br />the increasing demand made on his $250 petty cash float.<br />"Mrs. Mulroney used to ask me to pay for things like lamps or things<br />for the house out of the kitchen petty cash," he said, "so I had to have<br />the float increased to $1,500."<br />One of the reasons Mr. Martin took the job was the promise of travel,<br />but there were few trips. Although the Mulroneys usually stay in a <st1:state st="on">Florida</st1:state><br />villa, with the use of a Bentley belonging to their <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Montreal</st1:place></st1:city> friend Moses<br />Deitcher, Mr. Martin said he only went twice.<br />One of the busiest years at 24 <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Sussex</st1:place></st1:country-region>, said Mr. Martin, was 1987, when<br />the Mulroneys entertained PC party faithful to prepare for the 1988<br />election. "For VIP summer parties, everything was the best: little<br />brochettes of lamb, little homemade lobster spring rolls. When they had<br />the press party, the food was simpler - corn on the cob, stuff like that."<br />But of all the special jobs he did for the Mulroneys, Mr. Martin best<br />remembers Jovan Pivnicki's wedding in September, 1988.<br />He delivered one van load of soft drinks, soda, serving dishes, pots<br />and pans and other supplies to Mrs. Pivnicki's garage in <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Montreal</st1:place></st1:city> a week<br />before the wedding and another load to the hall the day before. He said he<br />spent two weeks preparing food for a cocktail reception for 180 guests,<br />creating canapes such as Chinese dumplings and baby spring rolls.<br />Mr. Martin said he worked through the night before the ceremony with<br />the florist and staff from 24 <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Sussex</st1:place></st1:country-region>, setting up the tables, preparing the<br />food, washing the floor, swathing the wedding cake in tulle.<br />"I finished at 2 a.m., drove back to <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Ottawa</st1:city></st1:place>, loaded the van up with all<br />the food, silver trays, chafing dishes, a deep fryer. Then I drove it back<br />the next morning."<br />According to Mr. Martin, the National Arts Centre sent orange juice and<br />Perrier as well as waiters, a*chef*and their banquet manager to help. "The<br />NAC sent Mrs. a bill for $1,300," Mr. Martin said. "And Mrs. brought all<br />the wines."<br />As far as the Pivnicki wedding was concerned, Mr. Lavoie said, the<br />families paid for all of it, including the food. "The*chef*works out of<br />the house for the family. It doesn't matter if he works one day on a<br />wedding."<br />Mr. Martin said it was not long after the wedding that he decided it<br />was time to leave. One reason was that two months earlier a new household<br />co-ordinator had been hired at a high salary, he said, to supervise the<br />staff, a job Mr. Martin had been doing in addition to his*chef's*job. Mr.<br />Martin said Ms Brownlee advised him a lawyer might be able to help him get<br />a fair severance, so he hired one and left with an $11,000 settlement.<br />"Mrs. was very upset. You don't leave THEM. She even offered to get me<br />financial backing for a new restaurant of my own. But I had had it."<br /><br /><br />GLOBE AND MAIL - DOCUMENT 4 - Page 1 of 2<br />:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::<br />850790253 WED MAR.20,1985 PAGE: P4<br />CLASS: News<br />DATELINE: WORDS: 210<br />:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::<br /><br />** Mulroneys' non-nanny **<br />** quits controversial job **<br />From the Ottawa Bureau<br />of The Globe and Mail<br />The nanny at 24 Sussex Drive has left her position, although Prime<br />Minister Brian Mulroney's aides say there was never a nanny there.<br />Elizabeth MacDonald was first described by the Prime Minister's Office<br />as a nanny.<br />A clarification was issued quickly, however, because of the tricky<br />matter of the Prime Minister's election promise that taxpayers would never<br />pay for his family's nanny, as they did for former prime minister Pierre<br />Trudeau's nanny.<br />Mr. Mulroney's aide Fred Doucet called Miss MacDonald one of several<br />staff members who ''interface with the children.''<br />Mila Mulroney preferred last fall to describe Miss MacDonald's $17,000-<br />a-year job as that of maid and ''mother's helper.'' Mrs. Mulroney, who is<br />expecting her fourth child, insisted she would never hire a nanny because<br />she prefers to raise her children herself.<br />Press aide William Fox stressed again yesterday that Miss MacDonald<br />''was never a nanny'' and said she is leaving to return to school.<br />Two other positions at the Prime Minister's residence have been filled,<br />according to the most recently published weekly list of orders-in-council.<br />Albert McRobb, a former member of the Canadian Armed Forces, has been<br />hired as household co-ordinator.*Francois*Martin*will be*chef.*</div>Stevie Cameronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12743790393702620918noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10966394.post-17164783973429267092008-02-07T19:08:00.000-05:002008-02-07T19:36:19.285-05:00Francois MartinFrancois Martin is a wonderful person and was courageous in speaking out about the excesses he witnessed firsthand at 24 Sussex Drive when he worked there. After quitting his job because of these, he put together a manuscript about his experiences but couldn't find a publisher brave enough to take it; one he approached, he told me later, was former FLQ terrorist Jacques Lanctot who became a successful book publisher after serving three years in a Quebec prison (and some years in exile in Paris and Cuba) for taking part in the 1970 kidnap of James Cross, the British consul in Montreal.<br /><br />I interviewed Lanctot in 1990 for a CBC Fifth Estate documentary on the anniversary of the October Crisis and the Cross kidnapping and could not resist asking him why he had rejected Francois Martin's manuscript.<br /><br />Wasn't it any good? I asked. <br /><br />It was very good, he replied. But he couldn't take it , he said; "if I had I would have lost my Canada Council grant."<br /><br />After speaking out about the Mulroneys and giving me on-the-record interviews for my book, Mr. Martin had a difficult time finding work. Later, thank God, he was very successful. He deserved his success and I liked him very much.<br /><br />But today he told the Ethics Committee today that I exaggerated in retelling his stories of the money that came into 24 Sussex Drive, money he often picked up in cash forMila Mulroney. My interviews are all in the archives at York University; I donated them to the Nathanson Centre for the Study of Organized Crime and Corruption at Osgoode Hall Law School. I will arrange to get them pulled and will check the originals.<br /><br />But I didn't exaggerate. Both Mrs. Mulroney's assistant, Bonnie Brownlee and, later, Senator Marjory Lebreton confirmed that cash went to Sussex Drive for the Mulroneys. (Senator Lebreton told me this during a heated conversation on a now-defunct CBC Newsworld television talk show hosted by Clare Hoy and Judy Rebick.) So did Senator David Angus, the head of the PC Canada Fund which was a source for much of the cash. (See the previous posting.)<br /><br />Every fact like this was checked and double-checked and I interviewed Francois Martin several times, often with my colleague, Rod Macdonell. Along with the cash, Mr. Martin also told us about gifts of couture clothing, art and other items from Mulroney friends, especially George and Helen Vari.Stevie Cameronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12743790393702620918noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10966394.post-90323709040800920102008-01-27T17:40:00.000-05:002008-01-28T12:31:37.176-05:00Mr. Mulroney's money<span style="font-family:georgia;">As several people</span> prepare to tell the Commons Ethics Committee what they know about Brian Mulroney and money he received from various sources, I thought it might be useful to offer a brief review of some of what I have learned about all this myself.<br /><br /><ul><li>Before Brian Mulroney was elected Prime Minister of Canada, a powerful cross-Canada network of fundraisers, led by Montreal Conservative senator Guy Charbonneau, offered a variety of ways to donate to his leadership campaign. One of the most interesting options, offered only to trusted insiders, was an account was set up for Mulroney in a downtown Montreal branch of Montreal Trust. Donors who were interested in privacy and who didn't require tax receipts could make out a cheque to Montreal Trust - Account # 830, and Mulroney could withdraw money from this account himself.</li></ul><br /><ul><li>Shortly before Mulroney's 1984 victory, one fundraiser I know was offered a senatorship by Guy Charbonneau (who died a few years ago) in exchange for a contribution of $100,000 to Account 830 at Montreal Trust. The fundraiser said no, thanks.</li></ul><br /><ul><li>While Mulroney was prime minister, his blind trust and other financial affairs were managed by Bruce Verchere, a Montreal tax lawyer who later shot himself. The whole story - or rather, the part I was able to tell - is in <span style="font-style: italic;">Blue Trust</span>, a book published by Macfarlane Walter &amp; Ross in 1998.</li></ul><br /><ul><li>When I was researching a story about the Mulroneys' decorating expenses at 24 Sussex Drive, a story that appeared in the Globe and Mail in 1987, I discovered the PC Party was underwriting many of the costs - at least $324,000 worth. Buried in the receipts was one cheque on CIBC account number 72-1112 at their main Montreal branch on Rue Rene Levesque. This cheque, made out to the Mulroney's interior designer, Giovanni Mowinckel and bearing the signature of PC Canada Fund Chairman David Angus, had no logo or identification on it; a call to the bank confirmed that it was a PC Canada Fund account. But Robert Foster, the man who succeeded Mr. Angus in 1994 as head of the Fund, told me that the Fund only had one bank account and it was held in the CIBC in Ottawa.</li></ul><br /><ul><li>Mulroney and his spokespeople always denied that he received any financial support from the PC Party while he was in office. When I interviewed Mr. Angus in his law office in Montreal on June 27, 1994 I asked him about reliable information I had obtained that Mr. Mulroney was receiving about $300,000 a year from the party. Another source, the Mulroneys' former chef, Francois Martin, had also told me that for several years he would go to the Prime Minister's Office to pick up envelopes of cash from Fred Doucet or other persons; the envelopes were always unsealed and contained thousands of dollars - he remembered amounts of anywhere from $8,000 to $12,000 or so. The money, he told me, was "walking-around money" for Mila Mulroney. Martin also did banking for Mrs. Mulroney, taking envelopes of cash to deposit in her account at the Bank of Montreal on Wellington Street in Ottawa. (Many years later I met a former bank manager who handled the Mulroney accounts. He wouldn't talk about them but he did admit the work was often, as he put it wryly, "quite ... exciting.")<br /></li></ul><br />To my surprise, I enjoyed most of my interview with Mr. Angus despite the fact that he got angry a couple of times and had a lawyer there to record the entire interview. (It was Kathryn Chalmers, a partner in Stikeman Elliott's Toronto office.) Most of the time Mr. Angus, appointed to the Senate in 1993 by Mr. Mulroney, was courteous. I was accompanied by my research associate and fellow journalist Rod Macdonell, an investigative reporter at the Montreal <span style="font-style: italic;">Gazette</span>. Each side taped the interview which lasted about two hours. Rod and I compared our tapes and transcripts and corrected them; we sent a copy of the final transcript to Mr. Angus for comments or corrections but received no response. <span style="font-family:georgia;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:georgia;">Here are a few of the questions and answers that relate to money provided by the party to Mr. Mulroney taken from a much longer interview; <span style="font-weight: bold;">SC</span> is Stevie Cameron and <span style="font-weight: bold;">DA</span> is David Angus and [square brackets] indicate necessary explanations of terms or identification of individuals.<br /><br /><br /></span><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>SC</b>: … Then we have also been told that the party supplemented Mulroney’s income by $300,000 a year, money that appears to have been on top of the money given for specific expenditures. And what you and I have talked about in the past are these specific expenditures, you know, when you said that when he and his wife are doing something political for the party, of course we support that. We’ve talked about that. And you’ve talked about that with <st1:personname st="on">Richard Cleroux</st1:personname> [former Globe and Mail national reporter] as well, who’s been giving me some help with this. So on top of that, can you confirm this other statement I have?<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>DA:</b> Make the statement and I’ll see.<o:p style="font-family: arial;"></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>SC</b>: That the party supplemented his income by about $300,000 a year.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>DA:</b> No, absolutely false, totally false. He never had any moneys from the party other than to reimburse incident expenses that he occurred. That were incurred by him in his functions as leader of the PC party. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>SC</b>: OK, let me get that: I never had any money from the party except to reimburse him for expenses he incurred…<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>DA:</b> for expenses<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>SC</b>: for expenses he incurred<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>DA:</b> As in fulfilling his functions as leader of the party.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>SC</b>: I could ask you this right now, but later on we’ve got Gerry St. Germain [former PC Party president] babbling on about the money. Do you remember that incident where Gerry St. Germain talked about the money? I’ll get to that in a second.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>DA:</b> OK. I don’t recall it, but you may…<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>SC</b>: Well, he’s talking about income. [During the interview I read the following section of a newspaper story about PC Party President Gerry St. Germaine to Mr. Angus:]<br /></span></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:georgia;" >On July 18, 1991, on the eve of the party’s national convention, St. Germain was questioned by reporters over a mysterious story that had surfaced in <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Ottawa</st1:city></st1:place> about Mulroney’s earnings. An anonymous Revenue Canada official leaked a report to a member of the media that said Mulroney had filed a return for earnings in 1990 of about $300,000 — almost twice as much as the annual $164,200 he earned in salary and tax-free allowances from the House of Commons. The report, which was never verified as to its accuracy, said that in ‘89 Mulroney filed three T4 slips including one for pay from the party which added up to over $300,000. In interviews, St. Germain admitted the PC Party was regularly paying the Prime Minister extra money for expenses, but he refused to say how much that was. “The party does give assistance to the leader of a party, and what the Prime Minister actually declares as income is his business,” St. Germain said. “I haven’t got any information as to amounts. We do give assistance because there are certain things the Prime Minister has to do that relate to party functions.” He insisted the extra money was not a supplementary income; he told reporters the accounting arrangements were all open and above board.<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-weight: bold;">SC: </span>I’m saying here in the manuscript: "What he wouldn’t tell the media was how the payments were made. Was the money paid in lump-sum amounts? He wouldn’t say. What about receipts? Did Mulroney have to submit receipts? Again, no answer. Then, quoting Gerry St. Germain directly: 'I can only say to you if there was an allocation made and I am not part of that process, the accounting process, but the allocation is predicated on demand for political functions that do take place that involve the Prime Minister.'" </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:georgia;" >And then of course later that day he backs off entirely and says the PC Party doesn’t supplement the income of the leader.<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:georgia;" ></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>DA:</b> He probably checked, … I don’t know. All the first part, you’re assuming that the payment in the leaked document was true. The 300,000 never was pegged, no figures in the nature of income ever were pegged by the party to the Prime Minister, or when he was leader.<br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:georgia;" >And as I said before and I’ll repeat, and I’ll put it to you in even a more extensive way: When he became leader of the party, he approached me, you know, and said that he’d had chats with former leaders, not only of our party, because things happen, from day to day, you’re traveling all over the country, and he said the party is probably going to incur, pay some bills in the normal course of events while I’m leader of this party. And some of them are going to be of a personal nature. And I would like you to keep strict track of the expenses of a personal nature and bill me on a regular basis. And I was given a letter to that effect, and instructed to behave in that fashion. And I monitored, and it was with an auditor, and every, periodically I would invoice Mr. Mulroney for any expenses that were paid by the party that we considered to be of a personal nature, and he would pay immediately.<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:georgia;" >And that lasted right through until he left last year. And I know of no other payments that were ever made to him by the party while I was chairman of the PC Canada fund, and I was the only chairman of the PC Canada fund throughout the years he was leader. [pause] As I say, none of the payments that were made in any stretch could be deemed to be income. In fact, I raised with him, when we were paying, rather than wait till October when he had time to gather all the receipts in of all the stuff where he had incurred expenses having a barbecue for the media, say, or for all the party executive or whatever at 24 Sussex. We’d pay on a regular basis, on a monthly basis a fixed amount, and I said, you know, we’d better make sure that this is , from a fiscal point of view, the right way to do it, I mean … you’d better check with your lawyers and so forth.<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:georgia;" >And then ultimately a tax ruling was obtained from Revenue <st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on">Canada</st1:country-region></st1:place> that we were doing it correctly, and I personally verified all of that. And as I say, there were never any large amounts. The only large amounts, by the way, that were ever paid over on his behalf and that I recovered by invoicing him later, were the Colvin Design ones, and that was all an arrangement made by Dr. Doucet. [Colvin Design was the interior design firm responsible for decorating the officials residences at 24 Sussex Drive and Harrington Lake, as well as Mr. Mulroney's parliamentary office and Mila Mulroney's office in the Lengevin Building.] You can ask me more, we’ve talked about it in the past, but that was, Doucet came to me saying that they’re doing certain things, renovations at 24 Sussex, that a massive project was being run by Colvin Design, that there were big expenditures up front and that they were going to require regular cash flow, and that there would be amounts in the range of 20 to 25 thousand dollars required on a regular basis, and I gave Doucet a whole lot of post-dated cheques so that he can…<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:georgia;" >But it isn’t, I never, ever had any concerns about signing authority, all those cheques were signed by two people in any event, they were done, they were handed, I personally handed over those cheques to Doucet, and they were given out, and then you know what all happened after that, and then one of my invoices, two or three invoices, was all paid by Mr. Mulroney out of his personal money. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:georgia;" ></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>SC</b>: This is a sort of funny thing that’s come to me, basically through <st1:personname st="on">Richard Cleroux</st1:personname> who is a very good friend and also assisted me on this book... and he’s helped me a good deal because he’s someone who’s done more work on travel expenses than I have, and I think this is where you and he did talk. He says that he has it from External Affairs officials… they set up a task force to handle the access requests from reporters about travel costs, and the general practice developed that when an access request was put in, then the PMO was told and then the money was recovered from the fund, in other words it sort of took the access request from the reporter to trigger the money from the fund…<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>DA:</b> I don’t know any of that. What I do know, though, is that from time to time, it was quite analogous to the deal I had with Mr. Mulroney that, you know, when we felt there were some expenses that we paid that were of a personal nature, I would send him a bill. My understanding is that with traveling everything gets paid by the, whatever it is, the PCO, or the government, and when everything is being reviewed later on they say well that’s a personal expense, and so they would advise the Prime Ministers office that these particular events were of a personal nature, and they need to be reimbursed. And sometimes it was deemed that they were of a party nature. And so I would get a request to pay, and believe me I would scrutinize them, and I was known for being pretty damn tough on these things, and they would be paid if we felt they were appropriate to pay.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">But yes it happened. I don’t know any of the reasons for it or whether it had anything to do with access or, … that was others.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">And by the way, just on <st1:personname st="on">Richard Cleroux</st1:personname>, I don’t think I’ve seen or spoken to <st1:personname st="on">Richard Cleroux</st1:personname> for ten years. I knew him here in <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Montreal</st1:city></st1:place>, we had a mutual friend and we would see each other socially. I may be wrong that we bumped in at a reception or something… maybe that was what Eric referred to and I don’t remember. No, I honestly don’t.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>SC</b>: I think he interviewed you about, I think he called you about when there was a trip to the <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Paris</st1:city></st1:place>…<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>DA:</b> When was that, right at the very beginning?<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>SC</b>: That was in, the trip was in ‘86, the access requests were made…<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>DA:</b> That’s possible, but I don’t think it happened, but it might have, and did I give him the story? The answers?<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>SC</b>: No, you gave him pretty much what you’re telling me, and I was afraid that I would have to have Richard’s kind of … and I would rather ask you about it<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>DA:</b> That’s how it would work, and I don’t know the beginning part. But I know that from time to time , bills that had already been paid to the supplier, be it a hotel or a restaurant, I would have to give a cheque to the Receiver-General for <st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on">Canada</st1:country-region></st1:place>, and I would have copies of the bills all broken out.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>SC</b>: Well in terms of entertaining for <st1:street st="on"><st1:address st="on">24 Sussex Drive</st1:address></st1:street> and that kind of thing, did you cover any of those bills?<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>DA:</b> No, but I assumed, and I guess I was told, certainly it was a good healthy understanding, that the expense money that I made available, that the party threw me, made available, to the Mulroneys, was to cover, in part at least, entertaining at their home. For party things. Other than state affairs.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>SC</b>: So you mean, I don’t understand this, Mr. Angus.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>DA:</b> Let’s say that he had a dinner there. I don’t know, I didn’t have anything to do with organizing any of the entertaining at <st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on">Sussex</st1:country-region></st1:place>, nor did I ever get a bill to pay for any that I can remember. I may be wrong, there might have been some bills that I was asked to pay. For printing invitations, I seem to recall one or two. And I seem to recall some musicians, you know, that played at a deal where all the party executive were there for a Christmas reception. Those, I would have felt, were party morale builders, and they were held from time to time, and the leader, you know, quite properly would bring in the troops. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">And that, I felt that it was, that the party, the money we paid for expenses would come out of that, would be used for that. Wouldn’t be used for some personal thing.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>SC</b>: This is difficult, this is where you and I have…<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>DA:</b> Well let’s clear it up.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>SC</b>: OK. You’re saying, would you give Mr. Mulroney, then , expense money ahead of time which would cover these and then he did…<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>DA:</b> Yeah, I explained that to you earlier. I…<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>SC</b>: I misunderstood you. I thought you only paid for expenses that he had. It’s like when I go on a trip for the <i>Globe</i>, I have to bring back everything, I pay for everything, and then when I come back they pay me back. But what you’re saying is…<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>DA:</b> We tried to even out the cash flow so that they would have moneys available to them to pay these expenses on a regular, even sort of on-going basis. So an amount was worked out after a budgeting process in discussions with the Mulroneys. And then it was divided by 12, and a monthly amount was paid. I was concerned that there might be a tax consequence; a ruling was obtained. And everything went on fine. That’s how it was done. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">And all the vouchers and everything were supplied through the principal secretary’s office, to cover all amounts.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">That might explain the catch. Because… I gave a cheque to the chief of staff in trust, once a month, like clockwork.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>SC</b>: Are you going to tell me how much it was?<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>DA:</b> It was a modest sum. Believe me. And again… I’m not going to ,but…I can only assure that you … I think you would be quite surprised at how low it was. And it was a function of my Scottish… It was hard raising the money ...</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">But it was all cleared with the board. Everything that was done with any one cent of party funds was known by the board of the PC fund. Everything that was going on, and I mean I didn’t come in and say today we bought three Le Devoirs, four la Droits and 99 baskets of tulips, you know, I said this is what is happening, if anybody wants to know any more details, here come and see me. We didn’t sit around, you know, we dealt with broad matters of principle. Like in a bank board meeting or anywhere else, you have… but I absolutely made it a rule… like you, I don’t like all this stuff that’s going on, or alleged to be going on behind the scenes, and the people who are being affected not knowing about it, and so when I took on this job I made it a condition, and I selected the board of directors myself, and they were all told, and they all bought into this thing, and there was full disclosure and it was all agreed that it would be confidential, and it was our indoor management. And that’s why, you know, I was reluctant and I still am to discuss about those matters, because that’s other people’s fiduciary stuff. But that’s, the process I don’t mind discussing.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>SC</b>: Well, that’s very helpful to hear about this monthly cheque that went to Doucet. Now, you said you got a tax ruling. Is there any possibility that…<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>DA:</b> I didn’t say Doucet, I said to the chief of staff. And… I think he might have been in that role…<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>SC</b>: Well he handled the Prime Minister’s money and so on until…<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>DA:</b> … before he was the Prime Minister I think…<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>SC</b>: Well no… until he left, and then it would have been the chief of staff<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>DA:</b> And certainly I’ve told you it was him I gave the Colvin cheques to. He dealt with me, I arranged for these cheques in the order of $20 to $25,000, over a long period of time up to an amount, gave me the cheques, he released them, I’m here in <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Montreal</st1:city></st1:place>… and I didn’t want to be, that wasn’t my job, my job was to collect money.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>SC</b>: Well then it wasn’t your job, but Doucet was releasing some of those cheques…<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>DA:</b> Absolutely. And I knew he would…<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>SC</b>: Three a day!<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>DA:</b> Well, I wrote up the cheques and I knew they weren’t going to bounce.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>SC</b>: I wish I could say the same for my own. What about this tax ruling, is it possible for us to get a copy of it? <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>DA:</b> From me, no. Because, you know, that was done by the lawyers, Mr. Mulroney’s lawyers. [Bruce Verchere was Mulroney's tax lawyer as well as his trustee.] And I think he would be the appropriate person, I mean Mr. Mulroney, to ask. But I originally raised the idea as I said, and I assured myself, even though I don’t have any personal liability for that, and I like to do things that are done in the proper way for all the players. And I’m very comfortable that everything that was done, that I had anything to do with, was done in a proper way. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>SC</b>: And there, I assume that at times, if this amount was modest, then sometimes there would be additional things that you would have to cover on top of this money that you gave every month, because there might be a trip or something like that… that… this is not a trick question…<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>DA:</b> No, I’m trying to listen to it.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>SC</b>: … Well, I’m sort of rambling here, but you gave what you thought would work out for an annual amount and you divided it up by twelve, but what happens when something…<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>DA:</b> There were some other amounts from time to time, and if we paid them, as I’ve told you, I would bill him if I felt they were personal. And he would pay that, you know, he would pay it back. And there were other items that were presented as not in the ordinary expenses… that that other, amount… you know, … they might ask me, or Gerry [St. Germaine] or Bill Jarvis or Peter [Elzinga], various party presidents I’ve worked with, would come and say, you know, do you think it’s appropriate for the fund to pay. And this was one of the things you may have heard where I’ve had disagreements with the party, because my condition with Mr. Mulroney, and he’ll confirm it, was if I’m going to be in charge of collecting money I want to be in charge of that, you know, the controlling of the spending, because that’s where I saw the mess was, there was no control. You know, there were almost no paper trails of what had gone on before, and I set it up, you know, to the best of my ability, on a businesslike basis. It’s a big-business party. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">So they had to ask me, you know, on anything out of the normal to pay an expense like that. So I’m telling you there were to be paid.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><o:p></o:p><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>SC</b>: As chairman you would have had to know pretty well all of the fundraisers…<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>DA:</b> The way it worked, in my formula, is there would have been one or more directors of the fund, which is a corporation, which is the chief agent of the party, from each province. BC, for example, only one. We would negotiate out of budget for how much BC was supposed to raise. That individual then would get a team of volunteers to work with him or her and run BC. And I guess there would be people on those teams that I might not know. And that was right across the country. But I met most of them. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>SC</b>: How do two guys like Mario Taddeo [a Tory fundraiser and land developer - along with an employee - shot in his office, in a gravel pit in Mirabel, Quebec on December 4, 1987] and Henri Paquin [a Tory fundraiser and land developer blown up in his car on October 12, 1988 by a remote control bomb in St. Laurent, </span></span><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">a Montreal suburb</span></span><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">] ever get to be…<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>DA:</b> I’ve never heard of… oh, those were the two guys that were killed? They were never fundraisers. They never were, honestly.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>SC</b>: They didn’t raise a penny for the party?<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>DA:</b> Not that I am aware of, never saw a nickel. What might have been the confusion there, and this happens often, is that the ridings, under the law, the local constituencies in every province — how many are there? There were 275, 292 now, or something — they all can raise money and they don’t have to disclose. I mean it’s one of the loopholes in the law. I went to the Lortie commission and spoke on this, filed a brief, and it’s a loophole that should be filled! I mean, you can raise in Eglinton, or <st1:place st="on">Rosedale</st1:place> or wherever you live, $50-million, and pay it to the PC Party Eglinton and no one would ever know. Doesn’t have to be disclosed, that never came to me, never comes to the PC Canada Fund, every cent that was ever collected that we see there’s a record of. I have to give a receipt for everything over $99, and did, copies of every receipt was filed in two places, the thirtieth of June every year, full disclosure, it’s there, a list this year, do I have to tell you. That might be, I remember reading PC Fundraiser Murder in North End, and I never heard of the first, ever.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>SC</b>: So they were doing what the guys who were raising money for LaSalle were doing, they were just freelancing in their own riding…[In fact, Taddeo was a fundraiser for Public Works Minister Roch LaSalle while Paquin was close to MP Michel Gravel, who also obtained money for LaSalle.]<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>DA:</b> I don’t know what you’re talking about there at all, you might want to tell me. LaSalle, Roch LaSalle?<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>SC</b>: He was sort of interesting because they had fundraisers for him, basically retirement fundraisers for him when he was leaving, I think he had three good-bye parties, I know at one of them they raised $50,000. None of the money ever went to the party as far as I could see, it went strictly into a kind of a constituency account, and the big debate was over whether LaSalle had access to that account himself, as many people believed he did, or whether that was money for the riding. But you’re saying that’s the loophole that you have a problem with…<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>DA:</b> I’m saying you’re right on to that, and it’s something that I think you could render a service, because it should be cleaned up. It’s one of the problems of our… Apart from this one thing, in my opinion, and I’ve spoken all over the world on the subject, and that we have the best political fundraising laws in the world. They’re transparent, there’s accountability, if the law is obeyed, it works. The one exception is at the riding level. Other than in the writ period. During the writ period, and I take it you know what I mean by the writ period, then it’s controlled and it becomes in effect, the official agent in each riding is like the PC Fund. They’re accountable, they’re subject to the law, they can go to jail for seven years if they don’t follow the law. And they have to give receipts and all that stuff. But for the rest of the year, or years, between elections, I am the treasurer, you know, people could say, of the Rosedale Liberal Association, and I mean, the party never sees the money. … I try to encourage all our ridings. And I went across <st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on">Canada</st1:country-region></st1:place> and I enlisted the support of the president and the party itself to put in a system where, if they sent in the money, we would then be able to give a receipt to the donor so it would be easier for them to raise money. See, when you do it the way I was saying in the loophole way with the ridings, they can’t give receipts, you follow, because… they can’t give receipts that are good for tax, I’m the only one who can give those receipts, the central registered person.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>SC</b>: You’re kidding. I didn’t know that.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>DA:</b> That’s what’s so, you see, so annoying to me with this stuff written when it’s just so clear that I couldn’t have done those things anyway, because the law doesn’t… a riding goes out and says look, I’m working for Joe Blow, the upcoming candidate in somewhere, Don Valley East and we’ve got you down for a hundred bucks, please send, they send in… it can go right in your jeans, your purse. Bye-bye. No one ever going to see it. However. So I try to get our ridings to send all their money into the fund with the names of the people who gave it. We would put it into the PC fund, issue a receipt to the contributor, and we would charge 15 per cent as an administration charge, that would get the name into our records, that would give the person a tax receipt, that would enable the riding to have better-kept records, and it would ensure controls, to avoid precisely what you’re saying. By and large we’ve succeeded in this, but you never know. You never knew.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>SC</b>: …I didn’t know that you could give money provincially. I know…<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>DA:</b> In a constituency level… there’s a certain number of MPs here that have gotten into trouble. Seem to have been more from <st1:state st="on">Quebec</st1:state> than other ones… but there’s been quite a few from <st1:place st="on"><st1:state st="on">Ontario</st1:state></st1:place> too, and out west. But you don’t have any control over them. And some of those people that get elected, it’s the best job that they’ve had in their life, and they can’t read a balance sheet. You know, this was the reality, when Mulroney was running for leader he would say Trudeau has 95 Quebec MPs. I think 17 or 18 of them were functionally illiterate. Functionally illiterate. And yet they have this huge budget that the House of Commons provides them. You know, to hire their granny, and that’s what was happening. And these are the <st1:personname st="on">abuse</st1:personname>s that I think, you know, I would like to be on the record as saying need to be cured, and I did say in the Lortie hearings on more than one occasion that that was my one recommendation. Because it’s a huge…<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>SC</b>: Well I know that in the leaderships, that people can give money.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>DA:</b> Same thing applies to the leaderships.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>SC</b>: Because in Mulroney’s <st1:place st="on"><st1:state st="on">Nova Scotia</st1:state></st1:place> campaign for the leadership, you say you know nothing about it, I actually know a lot about it because I have all the documents on it. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>DA:</b> Well, did I send a cheque or not? I bet I didn’t.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>SC</b>: That’s why I asked you if you sent the cheque. Certainly you were asked for a cheque…<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>DA:</b> Yeah, well, I was asked for hundreds of cheques, and my answer was no. But if I slipped up or someone acting in my name at the headquarters, I would like to know about it. So if you have any evidence that I paid that cheque to <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Montgomery</st1:city></st1:place>, please let me know.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>SC</b>: Okay. Now I’ve just about finished… I wanted to … In the case of Mulroney in the leadership I won’t ask you any more questions about that because you say you were not on that thing, but just out of interest sake, in the leadership fundraising that was done in Nova Scotia where there was three ways you could give money to the Mulroney leadership campaign, and one was money that would be partly given… with Brian Mulroney, and I think you also marked PC on it, I’d have to get the documents, and that way a percentage would also go to the fund. But then you could give money to Mulroney’s campaign that would be under another name, or you could give it to <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Montreal</st1:city></st1:place> trust account number 830. …<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>DA:</b> Well, I honestly don’t know, but I can tell you if it’s helpful to you, but all three ways are very standard ways of raising money. Some people in leaderships like to cross party lines because their friend Joe is running for leader. It’s a great act of public service — they are really an NDP or a Liberal, but they… don’t want it to show that they gave a cheque to the Joe Clark campaign, or the David Angus campaign. So the fundraisers set up these accounts in a trust company, which is all there, … properly run. You can’t do that raising for the party because there’s only one person that can do it, and that’s the registered agent. The one where you’d make it payable to in brackets, like Brian Mulroney Leadership Fund (PC Candidate), the party had a rule that if it was given through the party, the party would get a 15 percent administration fee as I’ve described to you, and that money would go back so they’d get less money for their campaign, but nonetheless the people giving would have more incentive to give because they’d get a tax receipt. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>SC</b>: They’d get a tax receipt. OK.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>DA:</b> And the third way I forget which was just campaign Mulroney or something, where people are … proud to give and don’t want a tax receipt. Those are the three ways I know.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>SC</b>: In <st1:place st="on"><st1:state st="on">Nova Scotia</st1:state></st1:place>, one of them was called CDM Investments, where David Chipman, Fred Dickson and…<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>DA:</b> I don’t know that. But again, it’s like my February 22 fund, I just dreamed that up.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><o:p></o:p><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>SC</b>: I only have one or two more questions, then I’ll get out of your hair here. … I’m just curious, are you still on the board of Air <st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on">Canada?</st1:country-region></st1:place><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>DA:</b> I am.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>SC</b>: Do you know whether Air <st1:country-region st="on">Canada</st1:country-region>, this just saves me a call to Air <st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on">Canada</st1:country-region></st1:place>… Don’t laugh, I mean it’s just a business question here. Do they, I know Trudeau got a free lifetime pass on Air Canada, all previous prime ministers get a free lifetime pass, Clark had one. Do you know if Air <st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on">Canada</st1:country-region></st1:place> still does that?<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>DA:</b> I have a good idea of what their practice is, but I’d rather you phone them. It’s just, again, it’s a fiduciary… you know, we swear an oath, and that’s the way it is.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>SC</b>: You swear an oath when you’re in a board of directors?<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>DA:</b> Not, like, putting your hand on a bible, but it’s the law. You know, It’s a fiduciary thing, and it’s all secret and private. And that’s sort of company law.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>SC</b>: Has anyone asked you about the [Paul] Palango book, the money…[Paul Palango was a former Globe and Mail National Editor]<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>DA:</b> Nobody asked me about it, but I heard that it had a whole chapter on a marine case that I was involved in for about three years of my practice, because I’m a marine lawyer, so I bought it , it’s called Above the Law, and I… It’s got a lot of weird stuff in it.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>SC</b>: Did you see the little paragraph on Air <st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on">Canada</st1:country-region></st1:place>? <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>DA:</b> I haven’t seen… I guess I was just looking at that ship collision.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>SC</b>: Well you should look at… there’s a paragraph in there in which Palango says that Mulroney leaned on the board of Air <st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on">Canada</st1:country-region></st1:place> to pay Frank Moores the $5 million for his role in doing the Airbus deal. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>DA:</b> Well that’s absolutely crazy. I saw something, I didn’t see it in that book, but what I did see was a whole lot of stuff in the newspapers about five weeks ago, where it was just crazy and I saw Claude Taylor and people denying… I was on the board at that time, and as you pointed out I still am, there’s never been any payments like that ever made to the knowledge of the board…<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><o:p></o:p><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>SC</b>: I’m through, but I know Rod had a question he wanted to ask you.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>DA:</b> No. He’s out of order. But let me ask you a couple. First of all I asked you earlier there…<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">[pause]<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>DA:</b> You can ask the question.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>RM:</b> In one of the instances there was a cheque signed by you alone, … and I just wanted to know if that was common practice, that’s all. Those cheques you signed that you discussed earlier.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>DA:</b> Yes. There were many cheques that I signed alone. And … all accounts were audited, but the account that Mrs. Cameron referred to, and the cheque she referred to, that cheque was audited every three months. And I have a total file of letters saying it was handled in an above-board way.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">But you were saying that your title is On the Take, I mean I don’t see anything here in your questions sort of…<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>SC</b>: Mr. Angus, I already told you that I’m not saying that you’re on the take.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>DA:</b> Well what is this about , this on the take business?<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>SC</b>: It’s a title that has not been formally decided upon, it may be called that, because we have…<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>DA:</b> It sounds like money to me, that’s why, and you’ve said yourself that I was in charge of the money. And so I just wanted to know what you’re getting at.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>SC</b>: Mr. Angus, there’s a ton more money than anything that you were in charge of. I mean, you were in charge of the PC Canada Fund. And you have been very generous in your time and in your explanations. And I appreciate it, and I am not playing games with you. I wanted to know the answers to these questions.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>DA:</b> And I’ve given them. And I have seen this brochure, that your publisher I assume put out. Right?<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>SC</b>: I haven’t seen… I don’t know what it is that she’s got here.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>DA:</b> Well, it says that you’ve written a book, and it says this, and I’d like to ask you about this… I used the expression earlier that a person in the public can draw inferences, they’re not sophisticated people like you and me, or Mr. Macdonell, that impugns something improper with stuff… I’m referring just to this one phrase, because I’d like to know where you’re coming from on this.<br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">It says “On the Take uncovers the most effective political fundraising apparatus ever assembled in <st1:country-region st="on">Canada</st1:country-region>, at its height raking in $25 million in a single year, that was built on a well-crafted system of rewards, from cozy dinners at 24 <st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on">Sussex</st1:country-region></st1:place> to fat government contracts with tender. It encompasses a widespread kickback scheme that made sure a number of politicians received 5 per cent of the value of every government lease or public works job they granted. It examines the disturbing degree to which the influence of organized crime penetrated the party in power right up to the cabinet level.”<br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Now, if you were me, you know, with my record and I’ve been a volunteer and you did that thing, I think it’s a fair question for me to ask you, what is this illegal fundraising thing built on organized crime?<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>SC</b>: First of all I have to say to you that I think you’ve leapt to a conclusion in your sentence there that is not true.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>DA:</b> No, I just read there…<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>SC</b>: … I’m not saying that your fundraising operation had anything to do with organized crime, but I am not prepared to talk about this book with you at this stage. I told you at the outset that I feel that your own reputation has never been sullied, that you and I have had our differences, you are the fundraiser of a very wealthy party at one time that isn’t now… I have had Elections Canada check for me all the amounts that have been raised by all the parties, they sent back a corrected version of a chart I had done, and it wasn’t $25 million, I hear it was $24.5, an extraordinary accomplishment<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>DA:</b> ‘84<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>SC</b>: No, I think it was 88.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>DA:</b> Well, 84 and 88 were election years.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>SC</b>: … But I am just saying to you I cannot discuss chapters of the book in which you are not involved…<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>DA:</b> That’s your prerogative. All I’m asking is to be fair. That’s why I’m amazed you didn’t receive the letter cause you received my other letter… you told my secretary my manuscript was finished, I said could you then bring it, at least the parts related to me, so I could have a chance of giving my side of the story to the extent it may differ from yours. But can I assume you’re not saying I ran an illegal fundraising organization?<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>SC</b>: Of course you didn’t, and I would never say that.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>DA:</b> I’m not saying you wrote that screed there, but that’s out in the public as you know, to promote the sales, it’s saying how many pages the book is, what the price is, so it’s obviously finished, obviously ready to go.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>SC</b>: It’s not ready to go. The main manuscript is done, what I have to do now is come to people like you and say, look at all the things we discussed today. I needed to hear your response. In some cases it changes what I write, and I have lots of time to do that. In some cases I will disagree with you. Because I have a source that I think is reliable, and you’re denying it, or you’re saying no that’s not true.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" face="arial"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>DA:</b> Well is there anything that I’m saying where you have proof that I’m lying.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>SC</b>: Of course not. But I’m just saying to you that if I have a reliable source, you’re not going to give me the audited financial statements that you, or your receipts from Mr. Mulroney or anything like that. So I am taking your word for it. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" face="arial"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>DA:</b> Right, and I wouldn’t be silly enough to sit here and, what would be in it for me to tell you anything but the truth to the best of my ability. And that’s what I’ve done. So I think it’s quite fair, first of all, to make sure as I think you’ve just confirmed, there’s nothing I’ve said that you say is a falsehood.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" face="arial"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>SC</b>: I don’t believe that you’ve told me a falsehood. But I will be saying in this book some of the things you’ve told me.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b>DA:</b> Other people have another version.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><b style="font-family: arial;">SC</b>: Other people have another version.<br /></span></span><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:11;" ><o:p></o:p></span></p>Stevie Cameronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12743790393702620918noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10966394.post-39320813717585969652008-01-17T10:38:00.001-05:002008-01-17T10:39:16.941-05:00UninvitedAlmost as soon as I was invited to appear, I was uninvited. So many witnesses, so little time.Stevie Cameronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12743790393702620918noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10966394.post-77201235580433873932008-01-11T12:09:00.001-05:002008-01-11T12:32:40.412-05:00An invitation to appearMy e-vite from the Commons Ethics Committee arrived yesterday:<br /><br />Good Afternoon Ms. Cameron,<br />I am contacting you on behalf of the Standing Committee on Access to Information Privacy and Ethics. The Committee would like to invite you to appear as a witness regarding the Mulroney Airbus Settlement on the 29th on January from 3:30 to 5:30 pm.<br />Please confirm that you are available for this date either by email or by calling me at the number below, and I will give you more details.<br />Thank you,<br />Erica Pereira,<br />Committee Clerk<br /><br />"So how many other journalists have been invited?" I asked.<br />"And who are they?"<br />Two, I was told. Myself and Norman Spector.<br />"Norman Spector is not a journalist," I said. "He was Mr. Mulroney's chief of staff, Canadian ambassador to Israel and was made president of the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency."<br />He was also a senior bureaucrat in British Columbia and today, in retirement, he writes highly partisan columns and a blog.<br />Other journalists' names were originally on the list submitted by committee menmbers, but they have disappeared. So, in fact, only one journalist is appearing: me. And that's because the committee believes, I was told, that I know more about the case than the others and because I wrote a book about it.Stevie Cameronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12743790393702620918noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10966394.post-64120277892424947992007-11-26T23:39:00.001-05:002007-11-27T01:54:04.707-05:00Two good columns on Mulroney-Schreiber<div align="left"><span style="font-family:courier new;">I haven't posted anything on this blog for a while; instead, I have been standing back reading what others are saying. </span></div><div align="left"><span style="font-family:Courier New;"></span></div><div align="left"><span style="font-family:Courier New;"></span><span style="font-family:Courier New;"></span></div><div align="left"><span style="font-family:courier new;"></span></div><div align="left"><span style="font-family:courier new;"></span></div><div align="left"><span style="font-family:courier new;">Here are a couple of terrific pieces on the upcoming inquiries by Geoff Stevens, who was the Globe and Mail's Ottawa columnist for many years before moving to Toronto as the paper's managing editor. </span></div><div align="left"><span style="font-family:courier new;"></span></div><div align="left"><span style="font-family:courier new;">In Toronto he developed and encouraged two fine investigative reporting teams; one at the <em>Globe</em> in the 1980s and another, years later in the late 1990s, at <em>Maclean's</em>. (Both foundered or were shut down after Geoff left these places.) </span></div><div align="left"><span style="font-family:courier new;"></span></div><div align="left"><span style="font-family:courier new;">Geoff is now writing for the <em>Record </em>in Kitchener-Waterloo and the Guelph <em>Mercury</em> and teaching political science at Guelph and Wilfrid Laurier University.</span></div><div align="left"><span style="font-family:Courier New;"></span></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"><span style="font-family:Courier New;"></span></div><div align="left"><span style="font-family:Courier New;"></span></div><div align="left"><span style="font-family:Courier New;"></span></div><div align="left"><span style="font-family:Courier New;"></span></div><div align="left"><span style="font-family:courier new;"></span></div><div align="left"><span style="font-family:courier new;"></span></div><div align="left"><span style="font-family:courier new;"><strong></strong></span></div><div align="left"><span style="font-family:courier new;"><strong></strong></span></div><div align="left"><span style="font-family:courier new;"><strong>For The Record, Kitchener-Waterloo and Guelph Mercury<br />Nov 26/07<br /></strong><br />BY GEOFFREY STEVENS<br /><br />The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men, Gang aft agley, An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain, For promis'd joy!<br />—“To a Mouse” by Robert Burns.<br /><br />Stephen Harper knows what Robbie Burns was thinking when he wrote those lines back in 1785.<br /><br />Harper had his plans perfectly laid, or so he thought. Parliament would come back, and the opposition parties, eager to avoid an election, would do his bidding. First, he would bully them into supporting (or at least not defeating) his throne speech and any legislation that he decreed must be passed. Next, he would embarrass them by presenting a mini-budget off Parliament Hill, rather than in the Commons where they would have the right of reply. Finally, when the polls were ripe, he would bait them into defeating his minority government, thereby forcing an election and – promised joy – the election of a majority Conservative government.<br /><br />It seemed, briefly, as though Harper’s strategy would work. A poll taken after the mini-budget, with its tax cuts, lifted to Tories to 42 per cent. That’s majority-government range.<br /><br />In politics, however, the universe seldom unfolds the way the fellow controlling the levers anticipates. All it took was a fugitive awaiting extradition at the Metro West Detention Centre in Toronto to knock Harper’s plans awry. The polls came back down.<br /><br />Now, the Commons ethics committee has decided to investigate the Mulroney/Schreiber/Airbus affair. It is calling the man in the cell, Karlheinz Schreiber, the Airbus lobbyist and greaser, to testify, probably this week. At this stage, Schreiber has nothing to lose. The committee also intends to call Brian Mulroney, but whether the former prime minister – who has everything to lose – will answer the call himself, or send his faithful mouthpiece, Luc Lavoie, to retell his tale of post-prime ministerial penury, or blow the committee off is not yet known.<br /><br />There is no realistic prospect that the committee would seek a Speaker’s warrant, a rarely used power, to compel the former PM’s attendance if he declines to appear. But with or without him, there’s a real risk, as Liberal MP Robert Thibault acknowledged, that the committee could become “a little bit of a circus, a little bit of a gong show.”<br />One thing it definitely won’t be is a Canadian version of the U.S. Senate Select Committee to Investigate Campaign Practices, better known as the Senate Watergate committee, that transfixed American households – 85 per cent of which followed the hearings on live TV – between May 1973 and June 1974. That committee, which forced the resignation of Richard Nixon, was the biggest show of its kind (a real “reality” show) until O.J. Simpson came along.<br />The committee chair, Sam Ervin, a Shakespeare-quoting southern senator, became a folk hero with observations like these about Nixon loyalists John Mitchell and John Ehrlichman, two of the principal villains in Watergate: “I don't think either one of them would have recognized the Bill of Rights if they met it on the street in broad daylight under a cloudless sky.”<br />Not only does the ethics committee chair, Liberal MP Paul Szabo, an accountant from Mississauga, not have Sam Ervin’s turn of phrase, in Canada parliamentary committees simply don’t have the clout of congressional committees in Washington. There, the separation of the executive and legislative powers gives committees a significant degree of independence, which from time to time they exercise.<br />In Canada, lacking that separation, committees operate under the thumb of the administration. It is only in times like this, with a minority government, that the administration loses control. The opposition parties now have a majority on committees, giving them the ability to pursue inquiries that may (and often are intended to) embarrass the government.<br />There’s scant chance that the ethics committee will lay a glove on Harper or his government; there are too many degrees of separation between today’s Conservatives and Mulroney’s 1984-1993 Progressive Conservative governments. But the hearings will keep the issues of corruption, integrity and truthfulness alive in the public mind. These issues played in the Tories’ favour in the 2006 election. Not now. The high ground has shifted.<br />The government has ordered a public inquiry into the Mulroney/Schreiber/Airbus affairs. University of Waterloo president David Johnston has until Jan. 11 to draft terms of reference. There would then be a period of months, perhaps until fall, before hearings begin and witnesses are called.<br />The Conservatives thought that period might afford a window of opportunity in which to call an election. If nothing else, however, the ethics committee could slam that window shut.<br />Cambridge resident Geoffrey Stevens, an author and former Ottawa columnist and managing editor of the Globe and Mail, teaches political science at Wilfrid Laurier University and the University of Guelph. He welcomes comments at </span><a href="mailto:geoffstevens@sympatico.ca"><span style="font-family:courier new;">geoffstevens@sympatico.ca</span></a><span style="font-family:courier new;"><br /><br /><strong>For The Record, K-W and Mercury, Guelph<br />Nov 19/07<br /></strong><br />BY GEOFFREY STEVENS<br /><br />If the Prime Minister asks you to accept the second worst job in the country, there is only one way to respond. At least, there’s only one way if you are as committed to public service as David Johnston, the president of the University of Waterloo, is. You gulp, then say, “Yes, Prime Minister. I would be honoured. Thank you, Sir.”<br /><br />That, approximately, is how it went when Stephen Harper “invited” Johnston to accept the second worst job last week – the job of drafting terms reference for the inquiry into the financial dealings between former prime minister Brian Mulroney and Airbus fixer/lobbyist Karlheinz Schreiber. (We’ll come to the worst job in a moment.)<br /><br />Between now and his deadline of Jan. 11, Johnston will have to pick his way through political landmines as he prepares the mandate for an inquiry will not end up being either a witch-hunt (as the government fears) or a whitewash (as the opposition fears).<br /><br />He will have to determine how far back the inquiry should reach. Will it reach back to 1976 when Schreiber contributed $25,000 or more to Mulroney’s first run for the Conservative leadership (won by Joe Clark)? Will it reach back to January, 1983 when Schreiber paid to fly anti-Clark delegates to the party’s general meeting in Winnipeg to depose the leader and clear the way for Mulroney’s election as leader in June that year?<br /><br />Will the inquiry encompass the decision by Air Canada to purchase 34 aircraft from Airbus Industrie for a total of $1.8 billion? The year was 1988, Mulroney was prime minister and Air Canada was still owned by the government.<br /><br />Will the inquiry probe the secret bank accounts that Schreiber opened in Switzerland, into which he deposited what he has called “grease money” – commissions he received from Airbus to facilitate the sale of aircraft?<br /><br />Or will Johnston seek to confine the inquiry to more recent history – to whatever financial deal Mulroney struck with Schreiber as the former was leaving office in 1993; to the three envelopes of cash that Schreiber handed Mulroney in hotels in Montreal and New York in 1993 and 1994; and to the $2.1 libel settlement that Mulroney won from the federal government 1997 after he testified in a sworn statement that he barely knew Schreiber and had had no dealings with the man. Neither Mulroney assertion was in accordance with the facts as we now know them.<br /><br />The damage-control specialists in the PMO want the inquiry restricted to this more recent history. They are desperately afraid that the Mulroney/Schreiber affair will morph into the Tories’ version of the Liberals’ Sponsorship Scandal. They need to build a wall between the Mulroney era and the Harper era – that was then and this is now, and whatever happened then has nothing to do with today’s Conservatives.<br /><br />A far-reaching inquiry – one that goes back 30 years or so – would be costly and time-consuming and would keep the issues in the public arena for months if not years. For a minority government that aspires to be a majority government, the negative publicity and inevitable perception of guilt by association could be devastating.<br /><br />But a “small” inquiry – one with a limited scope or timeframe – would outrage the opposition parties, perhaps enough to bring down the Harper government. The reaction on Parliament Hill may not be Johnston’s concern, but he does have to try to draft a mandate that will pass the “smell test” among the public. To do that, the inquiry must address the public’s legitimate questions.<br /><br />What exactly was the nature of the relationship between Mulroney and Schreiber? What was the $300,000 in cash really for? Was there any more “grease money” paid to anyone that we are not aware of? How did a sleazy operator like Schreiber manage to worm his way into the favour of the former PM (and why did he let him)? What can be done to prevent lobbyists armed with envelopes of cash from buying access to political leaders in the future?<br /><br />Answering these questions will fall to the person Harper chooses to head the actual inquiry. This will be the worst job in Canada. The commissioner will almost certainly be a current or retired judge, although appointment to such a politically charged inquiry could result in major career damage for a sitting judge. Judges hate political inquiries and for good reason. Still, if the Prime Minister calls one of them, he or she would have little choice but to gulp and to accept.<br /><br />Cambridge resident Geoffrey Stevens, an author and former Ottawa columnist and managing editor of the Globe and Mail, teaches political science at Wilfrid Laurier University and the University of Guelph. He welcomes comments at </span><a href="mailto:geoffstevens@sympatico.ca"><span style="font-family:courier new;">geoffstevens@sympatico.ca</span></a><span style="font-family:courier new;"><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></div></span>Stevie Cameronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12743790393702620918noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10966394.post-15370437843437788732007-11-13T23:24:00.000-05:002007-11-15T23:52:37.583-05:00Turns out, it was all my fault<div align="left"><span style="font-family:courier new;">I've just had a chance to read some of the letters Karlheinz Schreiber wrote to Brian Mulroney over the last year; letters that were attached to the affidavit he filed in court. As the months wore on with no response from his old friend, Schreiber's tone grew angrier and more frantic.<br /><br />He could not believe that Mulroney, the man he gave cash to in 1993 and 1994 in time of need, could let him down like this. Now that he himself needed Mulroney to lobby Prime Minister Stephen Harper for help in preventing the authorities from shipping him back to Germany to face charges of fraud, tax evasion and bribery, there was only silence.<br /><br />Still, as I waded through Schreiber's arguments, I was startled to see my name appear here and there.<br /><br />"All my personal problems," he wrote Mulroney on January 29, 2007, "began with Stevie Cameron's book, 'On the Take,' and Allan Rock's political witch-hunt with the RCMP against you."<br /><br />Who knew.<br /><br /><em>On the Take</em> was published in the fall of 1994. I'd been interested in Schreiber since 1987 when I was a national columnist for the <em>Globe and Mail</em> and learned about his influence in the Mulroney circles.<br /><br />People told me that he was working hard to get government money to build a tank plant in Nova Scotia for Thyssen, the German industrial giant, a major manufacturer of military vehicles. His fiercest opponent was another Conservative, Sidney Spivak, the former party leader in Manitoba who had become the head of the Canada Israel Committe.<br /><br />As far as I am concerned, this was where the whole Schreiber-Mulroney story began for me - and here is what I published at the time. It was eighteen years ago. As I read it again now, I realize that unwittingly I had pulled together in this one story the central characters in a drama that would engage me for many years.<br /><br /></span><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family:courier new;font-size:100%;">And it is the contract here in this story - the Bearhead deal - that Schreiber wanted so much that six years later, in 1993, he hired Brian Mulroney to try to get it for him. Or so Schreiber tells us now. </span><br /></div><span style="font-family:courier new;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family:courier new;"><div align="left"><br />GLOBE AND MAIL - Document 1 of 27 - Page 1 of 7<br />MON SEP.25,1989 PAGE: A1<br />BYLINE: STEVIE CAMERON<br /><strong>Controversial plant gets green light in Cape Breton</strong><br />BY STEVIE CAMERON<br /><br /></div><div align="left">After four years of tense on-again, off-again negotiations, a West German company is going ahead with a controversial assembly plant in Cape Breton, thanks to government support and well-connected lobbyists.<br /><br />But the project has once again alarmed Canada's Jewish community, just as it did three years ago when their opposition forced Prime Minister Brian Mulroney's government to defer a decision to support it.<br /><br />Bear Head Industries Ltd. , a subsidiary of the German industrial giant Thyssen AG , is going ahead with plans to build a $58-million plant that will include military vehicles and tanks among its products, equipment the Jewish community believes will end up in the Middle East.<br /><br />Ottawa lobbyists Frank Moores, Gerald Doucet and Gary Ouellet have beenconnected to the project and Greg Alford, the former president of Government Consultants International - the Ottawa lobbying firm which was set up by Mr. Moores, Mr. Doucet and Mr. Ouellet in 1985 - is now in charge of the Bear Head project in Canada.<br /><br />Three years ago, Bear Head planned to sell the armored personnel carriers and tanks assembled in the Cape Breton plant to Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries, but the plan was fiercely opposed by theJewish community.<br /><br />"The sale of Canadian-made arms to Saudi Arabia would escalate the Middle East arms race and be detrimental to Israel's security," the Canada-Israel Committee said in February of 1986.<br /><br />Today, the committee is once again concerned that the company itthought it had stopped in 1986 is planning to go into production.<br />"The Jewish community of Canada will be extremely upset if the Thyssen war plant is brought into Canada," said Robert Ritter, the executive director of the CIC in Ottawa.<br /><br />"There's been, in the past, other facades around the initiative, but italways seems to come back down to the arms element.<br /><br />It was the Jewish community's belief that the earlier initiatives were terminated once and for all, but their revival represents an effort to do in Canada what theycan't do in Germany.<br /><br />"West German law forbids German companies to sell directly to some countries in the Middle East, but nothing prevents companies from assembling military equipment in other countries and then shipping it tothe Middle East.<br /><br />According to federal Department of External Affairs policy, Canada does place controls on arms sales to countries "involved in hostilities or where there is an imminent threat of hostilities."<br /><br />Mr. Alford said in an interview that the company plans to concentrate on "environmental products" such as flue scrubbers for industrial chimneys and waste water treatment equipment, but he confirmed that the plant would also be assembling military vehicles.<br /><br />"Defence is an important side to our project," Mr. Alford said.<br /><br />The environmental products and military products both use metal fabrication that can be done by the one plant, he said.<br /><br />Although Mr. Alford said defence work accounts for only 2 per cent of Thyssen's worldwide production, the plans announced by the company make it clear they still intend to try to sell their military vehicles and tanks through the United States.<br /><br />"While Bear Head will have full access to U.S. defence markets underthe Canada U.S. Defence Production Sharing Agreement," a news release says, "all exports by Bear Head Industries, including those outside of North America, will of course be in full accordance with the government's policy of export controls."<br /><br />U.S. policy has been to supply arms to both the Israelis and the Arabs, but Canada's policy has been not to supply these countries.<br /><br />The controversy first became public in 1986 when news reports revealed that Thyssen had asked the Canadian government in 1985 for a five-year export permit to ship products manufactured in Cape Breton to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Pakistan, Bahrein, Algeria and the United Arab Emirates.<br /><br />As the Canada-Israel Committee pointed out at the time, licences forthe export of military equipment are normally granted for a one-year period.<br /><br />"This exception to the rule would hamper the government's ability to effectively monitor Thyssen's exports to the Middle East," Sidney Spivak, chairman of the committee, said at the time.<br /><br />The federal cabinet debated the secret proposal twice in 1986.<br /><br />AlthoughExternal Affairs Minister Joe Clark and a few other ministers were strongly opposed to it, Sinclair Stevens, then industry minister, and ministers from Nova Scotia supported it enthusiastically.<br /><br />The issue was especially difficult because of concern about job creation in Cape Breton, where unemployment rates are among the highest in the country. Thyssen promised to create 500 jobs and predicted 800 spin-off jobs in related industries, but there was hope in Nova Scotia that the plant would eventually have 2,000 employees and create up to 4,000 spin-off jobs.<br /><br />To shore up more support, Thyssen hired Government Consultants International to lobby for it in the highest levels of government; the senior partners at GCI at that time - Mr. Moores, Mr. Doucet and Mr.Ouellet - are close friends of Mr. Mulroney and Donald Mazankowski, the deputy prime minister.<br /><br />Mr. Doucet's law partner in Halifax, Edmond Chiasson, was hired as BearHead's lawyer.<br /><br />Another supporter was Calgary businessman Karlheinz Schreiber, the chairman of the Bear Head board of directors and the only Canadian on theboard.<br /><br />Mr. Schreiber has extensive business interests in Alberta and Germany, and in 1980 he set up an investment company in Alberta for thelate premier of Bavaria, Franz Josef Strauss.<br /><br />Sources say Mr. Schreiber has also been a business colleague of Mr.Moores.<br /><br />Lastly, the powerful Canadian engineering giant Lavalin, which had been promised subcontracts for its plant in Pictou, N.S., supported the BearHead plan.<br /><br />With generous subsidies promised from the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, the plant looked like a certainty; only the angry and sustained campaign by the Jewish community persuaded the cabinet at the last minute to withhold its support.<br /><br />Then, in 1987, Mr. Mulroney appointed Donald McPhail,who had been Canada's ambassador in West Germany, as the new president of ACOA; Mr.McPhail was also seen as a strong supporter of the Thyssen project. (Mr. McPhail is now a senior adviser in the Privy Council Office.)<br /><br />Mr. Alford, who works out of Thyssen's Ottawa offices, was hired as executive vice-president for corporate affairs of Bear Head last December. He was once Mr. Moores' executive assistant at GCI and then the president of the company. He is Bear Head's most senior executive in Canada and reports to Juergen Massman, the company's president, in West Germany.<br /><br />The plans surfaced again publicly on Sept. 28, 1988, when Thyssen announced that Bear Head would be going ahead with the plant in full co-operation with ACOA and the Nova Scotia government.<br /><br />The announcement revealed that "in 1987 ACOA took on the co-ordination and lead role on the part of the Canadian government."<br /><br />After the federal election, when the area failed to elect any Progressive Conservatives and after severe cuts to defence spending, the project once again appeared to have been put on hold, but ACOA and BearHead spokesmen now say it is proceeding.<br /><br />Mr. Alford would not say how much money the government would give in grants and loans, but he did say the incentive package was attractive.Premier John Buchanan's government has promised Bear Head 120 hectares of land for $1 (the site is at the entrance to the Strait of Canso) and has offered to pay for 30 per cent of the cost of the infrastructure.<br /><br />Winn Potter, head of ACOA in Halifax, said his organization had contributed "under $100,000" toward a market research study and less than $20,000 toward an engineering study.<br /><br />But because the project would cost more than $20-million and ACOA deals with projects under that amount, he said ACOA's role would be turned over to the federal Department of Industry, Science and Technology and he did not know what the federal contribution would be.<br /><br />Thyssen employs 128,000 people around the world and 2,000 in Canada.</div></span>Stevie Cameronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12743790393702620918noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10966394.post-23572261205538536712007-11-11T22:24:00.000-05:002007-11-12T00:01:44.073-05:00How they spent the money<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:courier new;">Well, they spent it the same way you or I probably would if we had a nice windfall of a few hundred thousand or a million or two: they spent it on a place. A getaway. A holiday home.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:courier new;">Once Karlheinz Schreiber started splitting up the millions of dollars in secret commissions paid by Airbus, Thyssen and MBB (Messerschmidt-Bolkow-Blohm) to help obtain huge government contracts in Canada, there was enough money going round for some serious real estate.<br /><br />Frank Moores' lobbying firm, Government Consultants International, worked on all these contracts and he began by buying, with a friend, a beautiful fishing camp in the Gaspe in 1989 for between $150,000 and $200,000 and renovating it.</span> <span style="font-family:courier new;"><br /><br />We don't know if it was money from Schreiber that paid for this place because Moores had many major companies among his clients, but we do know that he used the first payments from the Airbus sales to Air Canada, payments that rolled into his firm in 1990, to buy a $200,000 condo in an exclusive gated community in Jupiter, Florida.<br /></span></span><img src="file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/Stevie%20Cameron/My%20Documents/My%20Website/Website%20-%20old%20backup%20June%2011%202007/images/lastamigo.gif" alt="" /><br /><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:courier new;">Giorgio Pelossi, Schreiber's accountant, wired him the money he needed from the accounts Schreiber set up to hold the secret commissions.</span> <span style="font-family:courier new;"><br /><br />In 1989, both the Doucet brothers, Fred and Gerry - now both of them working as lobbyists on Schreiber's projects - bought themselves condos in Ste. Petersburg, Florida.</span> <span style="font-family:courier new;"><br /><br />That same year, Schreiber himself bought himself a condominium in Rockcliffe Park in Ottawa for $375,000.</span> <span style="font-family:courier new;"><br /><br />And Europeans who received a share of the secret commissions on these and other deals involving Schreiber also bought holiday homes. One, for example, was Stuart Iddles, Airbus's senior vice-president from 1986 to 1994; through is wife, he purchased Casa Estacas, a waterfront villa in Puerto Vallarta in 1992. His codename in Schreiber's meticulous arrangement of sub-accounts in the Zurich bank that held the secret commissions, was "Stewardess."<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:courier new;">German officials who accepted secret commissions from Schreiber on a Thyssen tank deal unrelated to the Canadian contracts also bought luxurious getaways; one chose a home in Lugano, Switzerland; another a ski chalet, also in Switzerland.</span> <span style="font-family:courier new;"><br /><br />And what did Brian Mulroney buy? And with what?</span> <span style="font-family:courier new;"><br /><br />He bought two places but neither with Schreiber commissions, as far as I could determine. He appears to have used his own money to finance the new house he bought for $1.67 million in Montreal in March 1993 and which he renovated for another $1-million (although his original work permit had showed plans worth about $600,000).</span> <span style="font-family:courier new;"><br /><br />But in January, 1997, after winning his spectacular lawsuit against the RCMP and the Canadian government for including his name in a letter to Swiss authorities saying he was under investigation with regard to the sale of the Airbus planes and other contracts, he received an apology and $2.1-million to cover his legal fees and make amends.<br /><br />That was the same lawsuit that saw him deny having any sort of business relationship with Schreiber and stating that they only met for coffee a couple of times at a hotel in Montreal.</span> <span style="font-family:courier new;"><br /><br />A few weeks later he and his wife, Mila, were shopping for a holiday home in Palm Beach, Florida and in March, 1997 they bought a house there for $1.45-million. </span></span><br /></div>Stevie Cameronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12743790393702620918noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10966394.post-51727219111051191532007-11-08T23:32:00.000-05:002007-11-09T02:03:48.147-05:00Stepping down to private life<div style="text-align: left;"><span style=";font-family:courier new;font-size:100%;" >In January, 1993 Brian and Mila Mulroney were the talk of Palm Beach, Florida.</span><br /><br /><span style=";font-family:courier new;font-size:100%;" >Mulroney, folks were saying, had offered $40,000 to one local resident to rent his house for the month; he and Mila ended up renting the home of a local millionaire and started to house-hunt themselves, looking at houses on Island Drive in the $2.5-million range.</span><br /><br /><span style=";font-family:courier new;font-size:100%;" >No one was surprised when he announced in February that he was stepping down as prime minister and leaving politics. The date was set for June when a leadership convention would elect his successor.</span><br /><br /><span style=";font-family:courier new;font-size:100%;" >But before they could buy a Palm Beach getaway, the Mulroneys needed to find a home in Montreal and in March, 1993 they paid $1.67 million for a two-storey, four bedroom stone house on Forden Crescent in Westmount, the city's most expensive neighbourhood. The house needed work and soon Mila Mulroney was busy with decorators and contractors on plans to fix it up. It was going to be expensive; the building permit noted the work had been estimated at $600,000.</span><br /><br /><span style=";font-family:courier new;font-size:100%;" >How were they paying for it? Not to mention paying for all the other expenses that had been covered for them for nine years by the party and the federal government. Mulroney decided to join the law firm of Ogilvy Renault where he had worked before becoming president of Iron Ore of Canada. But he wasn't starting until August, 1993 and money was needed now.</span><br /><br /><span style=";font-family:courier new;font-size:100%;" >Mulroney had just resigned and was now living at Harrington Lake, the prime minister's official summer residence. His last visitor at 24 Sussex Drive, at a private lunch for two, had been Peter Munk; Mulroney was soon to go on Munk's board at Barrick with a generous batch of stock options and directors' fees.</span><br /><br /><span style=";font-family:courier new;font-size:100%;" >And one of his last visitors at Harrington Lake was Karlheinz Schreiber, in a meeting set up by Fred Doucet.</span><br /><br /><span style=";font-family:courier new;font-size:100%;" >When Harvey Cashore and I were working on </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:courier new;font-size:100%;" >The Last Amigo</span><span style=";font-family:courier new;font-size:100%;" > between 1999 1nd 2001, we searched through Schreiber's diaries and saw notes of the calls he had with Fred Doucet setting up the meetings in 1993 and 1994. This one at Harrington Lake on June 23 - when Schreiber now says Mulroney asked him for money - was just one of them.</span><br /><br /><span style=";font-family:courier new;font-size:100%;" >Mulroney formally resigned as prime minister two days later.</span><br /><br /><span style=";font-family:courier new;font-size:100%;" >We also saw in the banking records that on July 27, little more than a month later, Schreiber withdrew $100,000 out of the "Britan" account he has set up in a numbered Swiss account in Zurich, money from the secret Airbus commissions. And a month after that, on August 27, Mulroney and Schreiber met at the Montreal airport and Schreiber gave him the money.</span><br /><br /><span style=";font-family:courier new;font-size:100%;" >But the Mulroneys had other plans for raising money. Earlier that same summer, someone came up with the bright idea of selling the furniture and fittings at 24 Sussex Drive that they weren't taking with them to Montreal. Such things as curtains, a few tables and chairs and so on. The buyer? The government itself, through the good offices of the National Capital Commission's boss, a man called Marcel Beaudry. (The NCC was responsible for maintaining the official residences.) He made a deal with Mila Mulroney to buy her leftovers for about $160,000.</span><br /><br /><span style=";font-family:courier new;font-size:100%;" >The NCC called in three furniture experts to evaluate the goods being offered and the evaluations were, to be kind, uneven. Especially when they were given only a day or two to look at the stuff. By mid-June, 1993, the deal was struck and the NCC agreed to pay Mila Mulroney $150,000. What was interesting was the thought that some of the goods being sold had been paid for by the Conservative party many years earlier.</span><br /><br /><span style=";font-family:courier new;font-size:100%;" >Only when one of the dealers, asked to evaluate the furniture and outraged at the scheme, called me, did the story come out. I wrote it for </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:courier new;font-size:100%;" >The Globe and Mail</span><span style=";font-family:courier new;font-size:100%;" > in early July, 1993. Public reaction was swift and furious. In mid-July, Mila wrote Marcel Beaudry from a friend's house in France where she and Mulroney were holidaying to to say she was returning the cheque.</span><br /><br /><span style=";font-family:courier new;font-size:100%;" >Clearly, by the time Schreiber gave Mulroney the $100,000 in August, the money was very welcome.</span><br /><br /><span style=";font-family:courier new;font-size:100%;" >Annabelle King, then the </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:courier new;font-size:100%;" >Montreal Gazette's</span><span style=";font-family:courier new;font-size:100%;" > design editor, told me that the work on the Mulroney house was the talk of the town. One fact stood out, she said: the Mulroneys were paying most of the bills in cash.</span></div>Stevie Cameronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12743790393702620918noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10966394.post-58728163242617963942007-11-08T19:48:00.001-05:002007-11-09T01:59:59.554-05:00"Cash came in like it was falling from the sky"<div style="text-align: left;font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" ><span style="font-family: courier new;">Brian Mulroney has always liked cash. Tidy, untraceable, convenient cash. As far as I know, it didn't start with Karlheinz Schreiber; in fact, I don't know when it started. But soon after he was sworn in as Prime Minister of Canada on September and moved to the official residence at 24 Sussex Drive in Ottawa, a trusted confidant in his office began arranging packages of walking-around money for Mulroney's wife, Mila.</span><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:100%;" ><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:100%;" >Fred Doucet had been a close friend of Mulroney's since their days together at university in Nova Scotia, and joined the new prime minister as chief of staff. He made arrangements for senior members of the household staff - often the chef, Francois Martin, who also acted as household manager - to pick up envelopes of cash for Mrs. Mulroney, usually in amounts of between eight to twelve thousand dollars. This happened every week or two.<br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:100%;" ><br /><span> Martin told me, in interviews I had with him in 1993 as I worked on my book, </span></span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:100%;" >On The Take: Crime, Corruption and Greed in the Mulroney Years</span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:100%;" ><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;" > (published in 1994), that Mila Mulroney often asked him to do banking for her and he would take envelopes of cash, thousands of dollars in cash, and he would deposit it for her at the Bank of Montreal on Wellington Street.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;" >"Cash came in like it was falling from the sky," he told me.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;" >By the end of Mulroney's first term in office, he said, the system changed. Doucet left for a new patronage job and the cash moved to a new refrigerator-sized safe in the basement of 24 Sussex Drive. It sat near Martin's desk in his basement office. The prime minister's executive assistant, Rick Morgan, would deliver and retrieve the cash from the safe, Martin told me.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;" >Twice, when he was working at his desk, he saw Mulroney himself remove cash from the safe.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;" >Now, during all the years that he was the prime minister, Mulroney denied taking money from the Conservative Party to help him finance his lifestyle. When party president Gerry St. Germaine told reporters on July 18, 1991 that Mulroney did receive money from the party - in response to a question from a reporter who had been tipped off that Mulroney had filed income tax returns of $300,000, far more than he made as prime minister - he was forced to recant a few hours later, saying the party didn't supplement the income of the leader.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;" >But when I asked the party's chief fundraiser, David Angus, in his Montreal office in the spring of 1994, where the cash was coming from that Doucet gave Mila Mulroney and where the cash in the basement safe came from, Angus told me it came from the party and it was for personal expenses.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;" >Angus said he sat down with the Mulroneys every year to decide what expenses they might be facing for the next year and then set aside a portion of the funds raised by the party to cover these. "We tried to even out the cash flow," he told me, "so they would have monies available to them...on a regular basis." </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;" >When I asked Angus why the money arrived in bundles of cash he said it was more convenient that way.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;" >Bonnie Brownlee, Mila Mulroney's former assistant, admitted to me that she often picked up the cash and that the the couple's "financial things" would often be handled by people like Marjory LeBreton, another Mulroney confidante who is now a Conservative senator.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">NEXT: STEPPING DOWN TO PRIVATE LIFE </span><br /></span><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></span></div>Stevie Cameronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12743790393702620918noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10966394.post-14062566402004139842007-06-03T22:01:00.000-04:002007-06-04T00:06:53.031-04:00The Pickton File<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp1.blogger.com/_vTlSvZTe9Lw/RmN5bH3kPjI/AAAAAAAAABE/W74YCk28eu8/s1600-h/ThePicktonFile.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="http://bp1.blogger.com/_vTlSvZTe9Lw/RmN5bH3kPjI/AAAAAAAAABE/W74YCk28eu8/s320/ThePicktonFile.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5072031112224849458" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: justify; font-family: arial;"> <span style="font-size:100%;"> My latest book, <span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">The Pickton File</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">, which will be out later this month from Knopf Canada, is a first-person account of working on the Missing Women/Pickton story for five years. It begins with the research plan for a story across the country - a story that required me to move to Vancouver part-time - and find the people who could tell me what happened.</span><br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> Publication bans are still in force and Willie Pickton's first trial, on six counts of first degree murder, is still under way so it isn't possible - yet - to tell the whole story. </span><br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> So what I have done here, while I describe the process of investigating this story, is give you a guide to the unfolding events and the players: Willie Pickton and his family, the lawyers on both sides, the victims' families and even the journalists who are covering the unfolding case. </span><br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> I also take you into the Downtown Eastside, home to the women who disappeared, and tell you what their lives were like. And I take you out to the infamous Pickton farm, to Piggy's Palace where Willie and his brother Dave hosted riotous parties and to the nearby Hells Angels clubhouse. </span><br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> Most of the photographs you see in this book are ones I have taken over the years; a few came from friends and two new ones - one of Dave Pickton, Willie's younger brother, and one of Piggy's Palace, came from Global Television. Court artist Jane Wolsak provided three illustrations.</span><br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> And there are several maps to help you understand the geography of this story including a map of the Downtown Eastside, another of Willie Pickton's route from his home in Port Coquitlam to downtown Vancouver, a map of his farm and even a diagram of the interior of his trailer. </span></span> </div><span style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span>Stevie Cameronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12743790393702620918noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10966394.post-27339804895779398732007-06-02T21:21:00.000-04:002007-06-04T00:08:11.990-04:00The trial begins in the New Westminster courthouse<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp1.blogger.com/_vTlSvZTe9Lw/RmOKyH3kPmI/AAAAAAAAABc/G_bd0XlKoAM/s1600-h/IMG_8860.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 392px; height: 294px;" src="http://bp1.blogger.com/_vTlSvZTe9Lw/RmOKyH3kPmI/AAAAAAAAABc/G_bd0XlKoAM/s320/IMG_8860.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5072050199059512930" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><div><span style="font-family:Arial;">It</span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp3.blogger.com/_vTlSvZTe9Lw/RmN8En3kPkI/AAAAAAAAABM/hSMFgtp87q8/s1600-h/IMG_8794.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="http://bp3.blogger.com/_vTlSvZTe9Lw/RmN8En3kPkI/AAAAAAAAABM/hSMFgtp87q8/s320/IMG_8794.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5072034024212676162" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:Arial;"> took almost five years for this trial to start...<br /><br /></span><div><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:arial;">Although Robert William Pickton was first arrested at his farm in Port Coquitlam, BC, on February 5, 2002 and charged with two counts of first degree murder on February 22, 2002, his trial, on six counts of first degree murder, didn't start until January 22, 2007. In the intervening years two legal steps were completed - a seven-month preliminary hearing in Port Coquitlam, Pickton's home town, under Provincial Court judge David Stone and a year-long <span style="font-style: italic;">voir dire</span> in the Supreme Court in New Westminster that tested legal evidence. When this trial ends, Pickton will face a second trial on a further twenty counts - and no one knows when that will begin.<br /><br />Led by Crown prosecutor Mike Petrie, the prosecutors in this first trial have said they expect to complete their case by the end of June and then it will be the defence team's turn to present their witnesses and present their evidence. Most people expect the case to wrap up by the end of August.<br /><br />When the jury delivers its verdict, the plan is to begin preparations for the second trial. But many people believe that a second trial will never happen. Should the jury find Pickton guilty in the first trial, the feeling is that the Crown will stay the twenty charges saving taxpayers the costs of another lengthy court process, one that could include another <span style="font-style: italic;">vire dire</span>.<br /><br /></span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:Arial;">The pictures you see here (above, right) show the Supreme Court on Begbie Square in New Westminster at the start of the trial in January, 2007. The courthouse was built on the side of a steep hill and you can see the broad steps leading up past it to offices and condos at the top. It's early morning here and the tents used by television and radio crews are still zippered shut, waiting for crews to arrive.<br /><br /></span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span></div><br /><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><a href="http://bp2.blogger.com/_vTlSvZTe9Lw/RZ2-HrQhxjI/AAAAAAAAAAc/S5NkhnYgutA/s1600-h/Ritchie,+Peter+July+23+03+scrummed.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5016374599041009202" style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; float: left; width: 162px; height: 126px;" alt="" src="http://bp2.blogger.com/_vTlSvZTe9Lw/RZ2-HrQhxjI/AAAAAAAAAAc/S5NkhnYgutA/s320/Ritchie,+Peter+July+23+03+scrummed.JPG" border="0" height="77" width="244" /></a> </span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:Arial;">Willie Pickton's lawyer, Peter Ritchie, is shown here (left) talking to the media on July 23, 2003, the last day of Pickton's seven-month-long preliminary hearing. Today Ritchie heads a team of about fourteen lawyers working for Pickton, all paid for by Legal Aid at a rate which was been set by a judge in 2002 and kept a secret ever since.</span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span></div><br /><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span></div><br /><a href="http://bp1.blogger.com/_vTlSvZTe9Lw/RZ2_tbQhxkI/AAAAAAAAAAo/Orz0je_rHbI/s1600-h/Petrie,+Mike+July+23+03.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5016376347092698690" style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; float: left; width: 236px; height: 160px;" alt="" src="http://bp1.blogger.com/_vTlSvZTe9Lw/RZ2_tbQhxkI/AAAAAAAAAAo/Orz0je_rHbI/s320/Petrie,+Mike+July+23+03.JPG" border="0" height="193" width="275" /></a><br /><div><span style="font-family:Arial;">Crown prosecutor Mike Petrie (left; also shown on July 23, 2003) heads a team of seven lawyers. The <span style="font-style: italic;">Vancouver Sun's</span> Lori Culbert, the paper's lead reporter on the story, is shown behind Petrie on the right.<br /></span></div></div></div>Stevie Cameronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12743790393702620918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10966394.post-1118496730668684922005-06-11T09:25:00.000-04:002005-06-11T13:03:39.433-04:00Books, booksHauling me away from my lusty desires for textiles, jewellery and pottery, blogger-at-large Bill Doskoch has landed me with a thump back into bookworld and a damn good thing, too. My publishers would agree. His questions have forced me to start thinking again, something I haven't done since I stared at the last batch of notes I received from my researcher yesterday on the Pickton hearings in Vancouver.<br /><br />Bill's three questions - with answers.<br /><strong>1. What was the last book I purchased?</strong><br /><em>The Kite Runner</em> by Khaled Hosseini<br /><br /><strong>2. Name five books I really liked.</strong><br /><em>The Kite Runner -</em> it blew me away. It's the best book I have read in the last year. It deserves its success as an international bestseller, unlike the unspeakable d<em>a Vinci Code</em> which compresses ridiculous events into an impossible twenty four-hour period and was so badly written it made my teeth hurt.<br />(Bill's invitation here is too open-ended. I am sticking with five books I have read since I came to Israel in February.)<br />Okay, so I am half-way through <em>Saturday </em>by Ian McEwan and liking it much better than I believed I could. It is brilliant and I find myself sticking with this neurologist as he meanders through his own brain pan.<br />If I may interject in my own post here with a book I really hated that I bought recently, it's <em>Exodus</em> by Leon Uris. (This shouldn't count as one of the five.) I thought I's better read it, especially after talking to some friends who spent time after the war in Jewish refugee camps on Cyprus waiting to get into Palestine. Which is where Uris starts his plot before losing it altogether.<br />I read this book forty years ago and maybe I liked it then. Now I cannot get past the punctuation!Exclamation marks! The information is interesting and even useful but the telling excrutiating!<br />But I loved the new one-volume edition of Harold Nicolson's <em>Diaries</em>; it was as much fun to read as the first three volumes, the ones that were published in the mid 1960s. This is book three of my choices and brings me to my fourth book, Cecil Beaton's <em>Diaries,</em> which I just finished and which covers the same era. It's wonderful. Both men hated T.E. Lawrence (of Arabia); I think one actually called him "that shit, Lawrence." I suspect they were jealous of him and of his book, <em>The Seven Pillars of Wisdom</em>, which was a major hit among my grandparents' generation. I haven't read it but will; I saw the actual Seven Pillars in Wadi Rum in Jordan a few weeks ago and suddenly thought Lawrence was not at all the fraud that Beaton and Nicolson believed him to be.<br />For my fifth book, I'd pick Mo Hayder's <em>The Devil of Nanking</em> about a woman obsessed with the 1937 Nanking Massacre. It's timely - the Chinese are raising hell with Japan over this yet again- and it's a fine mystery. Beautifully plotted and written. It's ambitious and it works. It is loosely based on a true story about a real individual, Iris Chang, who wrote <em>The Rape of Nangking</em>.<br />There Bill. My tiny mind at work.<br /><br /><strong>3. How many books do I own?<br /></strong>My defence is that I am older than Bill is. I have thousands and thousands of books.Stevie Cameronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12743790393702620918noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10966394.post-1118490987163112642005-06-11T07:56:00.000-04:002005-06-11T07:58:45.113-04:00Shopping in the Old City: Beads<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/192/3704/640/collage14.jpg"><img style="BORDER-RIGHT: #000000 1px solid; BORDER-TOP: #000000 1px solid; MARGIN: 2px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 1px solid; BORDER-BOTTOM: #000000 1px solid" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/192/3704/320/collage14.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />The jewellery, especially the old beads for making it, are one of the best things about shopping in the Old City. <a href="http://www.hello.com/" target="ext"><img style="BORDER-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; BORDER-TOP: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; BACKGROUND: none transparent scroll repeat 0% 0%; PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; BORDER-LEFT: 0px; PADDING-TOP: 0px; BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px" alt="Posted by Hello" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/pbh.gif" align="absMiddle" border="0" /></a>Stevie Cameronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12743790393702620918noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10966394.post-1118490386251894012005-06-11T07:46:00.000-04:002005-06-11T07:48:25.276-04:00Tiles from the Balian factory<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/192/3704/640/collage34.jpg"><img style="BORDER-RIGHT: #000000 1px solid; BORDER-TOP: #000000 1px solid; MARGIN: 2px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 1px solid; BORDER-BOTTOM: #000000 1px solid" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/192/3704/320/collage34.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />Tiles from Balian's, another famous Armenian Pottery. Their store and factoy are in East Jerusalem, on the Nablus Road, north of the Garden Tomb and south of the American Colony Hotel. Like the Sandrounis, they sell beautiful tiles, murals, dishes and ornaments. <a href="http://www.hello.com/" target="ext"><img style="BORDER-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; BORDER-TOP: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; BACKGROUND: none transparent scroll repeat 0% 0%; PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; BORDER-LEFT: 0px; PADDING-TOP: 0px; BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px" alt="Posted by Hello" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/pbh.gif" align="absMiddle" border="0" /></a>Stevie Cameronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12743790393702620918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10966394.post-1118489625219849792005-06-11T07:33:00.000-04:002005-06-11T07:51:56.053-04:00Shopping in the Old City: Armenian Pottery<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/192/3704/640/George%20&%20Garo%20Sandrouni.jpg"><img style="BORDER-RIGHT: #000000 1px solid; BORDER-TOP: #000000 1px solid; MARGIN: 2px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 1px solid; BORDER-BOTTOM: #000000 1px solid" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/192/3704/320/George%20%26%20Garo%20Sandrouni.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />George and Garo Sandrouni, two of three brothers who own one of the best Armenian pottery shops in Israel; it's in the Armenian Quarter of the Old City. A few days ago they were showing their wares to Laura Bush, when she had a few minutes to spare between demos in the West Bank and Jerusalem. The Sandrounis make dishes, ornaments and tiles among their many products, all designed and handpainted on the premises. My favourites are their sinks and we have ordered one, painted with fish swimming in endless circles.<a href="http://www.hello.com/" target="ext"><img style="BORDER-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; BORDER-TOP: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; BACKGROUND: none transparent scroll repeat 0% 0%; PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; BORDER-LEFT: 0px; PADDING-TOP: 0px; BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px" alt="Posted by Hello" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/pbh.gif" align="absMiddle" border="0" /></a>Stevie Cameronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12743790393702620918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10966394.post-1118489205537765322005-06-11T07:26:00.000-04:002005-06-11T07:38:28.966-04:00Suzanis on the ceiling<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/192/3704/640/IMG_0378.jpg"><img style="BORDER-RIGHT: #000000 1px solid; BORDER-TOP: #000000 1px solid; MARGIN: 2px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 1px solid; BORDER-BOTTOM: #000000 1px solid" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/192/3704/320/IMG_0378.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />Suzanis, side by side with Palestinian embroideries, decorate a shop in the Arab souk of Jerusalem's Old City <a href="http://www.hello.com/" target="ext"><img style="BORDER-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; BORDER-TOP: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; BACKGROUND: none transparent scroll repeat 0% 0%; PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; BORDER-LEFT: 0px; PADDING-TOP: 0px; BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px" alt="Posted by Hello" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/pbh.gif" align="absMiddle" border="0" /></a>Stevie Cameronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12743790393702620918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10966394.post-1118488881221131972005-06-11T07:21:00.000-04:002005-06-11T07:39:48.700-04:00Suzanis on the ground<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/192/3704/640/collage13.jpg"><img style="BORDER-RIGHT: #000000 1px solid; BORDER-TOP: #000000 1px solid; MARGIN: 2px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 1px solid; BORDER-BOTTOM: #000000 1px solid" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/192/3704/320/collage13.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />Suzanis from the antiques shop at American Colony Hotel shop, Jerusalem <a href="http://www.hello.com/" target="ext"><img style="BORDER-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; BORDER-TOP: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; BACKGROUND: none transparent scroll repeat 0% 0%; PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; BORDER-LEFT: 0px; PADDING-TOP: 0px; BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px" alt="Posted by Hello" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/pbh.gif" align="absMiddle" border="0" /></a>Stevie Cameronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12743790393702620918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10966394.post-1117134691298923632005-05-26T14:54:00.000-04:002005-06-11T08:21:33.313-04:00Shopping in the Old City: suzanis, pottery and beadsFor weeks I brushed off all the imploring invitations to step into my shop, welcome, just see, look lady, you don't have to buy, just see lady, welcome, welcome, please, have some coffee, maybe mint tea?<br />The merchants in the Old City are desperate for customers but even in the good years, good years which have not yet returned, they intimidated me with the endless hassling. It made me crazy. It was the Jerusalem version of squeegee kids.<br />I was wrong. I should have accepted the invitations.<br />The hard sell is there, sure it is, but many of the shops are good and the people who own them interesting, charming and easy-going. I have made many good friends among the merchants of the Old City and will miss them when I go home.<br />But with so many shops, strung along the great streets of the Old City - Christian Quarter Street, David Street, El-Khanqa, Armenian Patriarch Road, Derech Sha'har Ha'arayot - how can you figure out the ones to enter?<br />Forget trying to decide on the basis of what you need or what you know. Go with what you feel when these merchants show off their best goods. They like to talk and get to know you; when they are a little surer of who you are and what you may be open to, they'll push past the trays of film, the postcards and the Hebron pottery (which I happen to like, okay?) and pull out the pieces which can make your pulse quicken.<br />Heard of suzanis? I hadn't - not until about three weeks ago. I stumbled over them with a friend when we edged in to one dusty place to look at Palestinian embroideries and old rugs.<br />"What are these?" I stuttered. "These!" The shopkeeper instantly dropped the stuff he'd pulled out for me and started unfolding suzanis - wonderful, gorgeous, breathtaking. My friend knew all about them; in fact she has a few. Hers, like these ones in the pictures, are antiques.<br />Suzanis are richly embroidered fabrics made as decorations, bedspreads, curtains, even pillow cases. And they were made in the 'Stans - Uzbekistan, Turkestan, Afghanistan...<br />The best ones you see now are at least 150 years old, but most of the ones in the shops are about 50 years old. The poppy is the most persistent symbol in them and the pieces come in various colours although most are stitched in reds or pinks with blue, tan, yellow and green silk threads.<br />I am also hooked (and have been for years) on handpainted Armenian pottery - the tiles, the dishes, the sinks, the lamps and bowls - all covered with the peacocks and flowers and trees and traditional motifs of this culture. There is a ton of nice Hebron pottery around that imitates it, but the real pieces levitate compared to the copies. At home in Toronto, we have a Tree of Life tile mural we had shipped from Balian's on the Nablus Road; for years it waited in a cupboard, each piece wrapped like a little present, until we could afford to renovate our kitchen. Now it fills the space over the stove. Our big buy on this trip is a handpainted sink from the Sandrouni pottery in the Armenian Quarter of the Old City; it will go to the cottage and rest there until we can afford a new bathroom.<br />Then there are the beads and the bead shops. The pal who taught me about suzanis also showed me the best old beads to buy and I am hooked. It's like crack. My hunt for them has taken me all over Jerusalem and now I am making necklaces for my daughter's wedding. Not with old beads, though; we're going for a more bridal look. Pearls and such. More expensive too, I might add.Stevie Cameronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12743790393702620918noreply@blogger.com4